138 DEATH-WATCH BEETLES. 



length, and ill its prevailing lines of grey and brown resembling 

 the colour of the time-worn wood, whose decay they help 

 (especially in their grnbhood) to accelerate. That alarming 

 " tick/' to which at midnight many a timorous heart has beat 

 in unison, is generally to be heard first in May, and on to 

 autumn, by day as well as night, and, being considered analo- 

 gous in purpose to the " call " of pairing birds, has, in reality, 

 as little of ominous about it. The sound is not vocal, but 

 consists of a series of quick successive beats, produced, usually, 

 by the striking of the insect's mailed head upon the hard 

 substance whereon it may be standing, or into which it lias 

 penetrated, most likely, while a grub. Some have supposed 

 the grub itself to be the drummer, but, if this sometimes be 

 the case, the perfect beetle is a drummer too, various accurate 

 observers having been eye- as well as ear-witnesses of its 

 performance. 



There are various species of these ticking, or more properly 

 beating, beetles, of the genus Anobium, of which a marked 

 characteristic is the concealment, nearly, of the head beneath 

 the thorax. Amongst these, two noted drummers are distin- 

 guishable by their uniforms in other words, by the markings 

 of their wing - cases, which in one * are striated, in the 

 otherf tessellated. Another, of a plain dark brown (Anoltlvm 

 pertmax], frequent in holes of old wood, has long been famous 

 for its pertinacity in simulating death, and for displaying a 

 * Anobium striatum. t -/. tessellatum. 



