396 NEUROPTERA 



ticking noise, supposed to be prophetic of the decease of some 



individual a human being we fancy, 

 not a death-watch. It is difficult 

 to believe that so minute and soft an 

 Insect can produce a sound audible to 

 human ears, and many entomologists are 

 of opinion that the sound in question 

 is really produced by a beetle of the 

 genus Anobium which lives in wood, 

 and that as the beetle may be concealed 

 in a hole, while the Clothilla is seen 

 running about, the sound is naturally, 

 though erroneously, attributed to the 



FIG. 247. A, Atropos Mvina- latter. But the rapping of the Ano- 



lA^TM^Sn.r lSat ria ' Uum is wel1 known > is produced while 

 the Insect is at large, and is said to be 



a different noise from that of the Psocid ; evidence too has been 

 given as to the production of the sound in a workbox when the 

 Psocid was certainly present, and the most careful search failed 

 to reveal any beetle. 



The Eev. W. Derham, who two hundred years ago was Rector 

 of Upminster, in Essex, and was well known as a distinguished 

 writer and philosopher, gave an account of the ticking of death- 

 watches to the Royal Society. 1 This gentleman was a most 

 accurate and minute observer ; he was well acquainted with the 

 ticking of the greater death-watch Anobium which he 

 describes very accurately, as well as the acts accompanying it, 

 the details he mentions being exactly such as occur at the present 

 time. He not only heard the ticking of the Psocid or lesser 

 death-watch, but repeatedly witnessed it. He says : " I am now 

 so used to, and skilful in the matter as to be able to see, and 

 show them, beating almost when I please, by having a paper 

 with some of them in it conveniently placed and imitating their 

 pulsation, which they will readily answer." He also states that 

 he could only hear them beating when it was done on paper, and 

 that this death-watch will tick for some hours together without 

 intermission, with intervals between each beat, so that it much 

 resembles the ticking of a watch. The act of ticking was accoin- 



1 Phil. Trans, xxii. 1701, pp. 832-834 ; and xxiv. 1704, pp. 1586-1594, Plate 291, 

 Figs. 4, 5 (pp. 1565 to 1604 occur twice in this volume). 



