468 Short Communications : — 



Insects. — The Death-iioatch. — Sir, I enclose you a spe- 

 cimen of one, and beg to preface the circumstances 1 ob- 

 served respecting il by two short extracts on tlie systematic 

 names for the species of death-watch. 



" Authors formerly were not agreed concerning the insect 

 called the death-watch ; some attributing it to a kind of wood- 

 louse, others to a spider. But it is a received opinion now, 

 adopted upon satisfactory evidence, that it is produced by 

 some little beetles, belonging to the timber-boring genus, 

 Anbbium Fabricius.^^ {Kirhy and Spence^ Letter 24.) 



" One of the insects which produce the ticking termed the 

 death-watch, is a woodlouse (Termes pulsatorius Lin.^ 

 A'tropo5 lignarius Leach), It is not so large as the common 

 louse, but whiter and more slender, having a red mouth and 

 yellow eyes. It lives in old books, the paper on walls, col- 

 lections of insects, and dried plants The ticking noise 



is made by the insect beating against the wood with its head. 

 .... Another death-watch is a small beetle (Anobium tessel- 

 latum)." {Insect Architecture^ p. S04.) 



As naturalists are not yet agreed respecting the insect, or 

 insects, popularly called the death-watch, I enclose you one, 

 •which, you will perceive, is a small.bipwn beetle, three-tenths 

 of an inch long, having . its, elytra, _ or two wing-covers, 

 uniformly fluted or furrowed in the. direction of their length. 

 It appears to be the Anobium striatum of the Fabrician 

 system, and one of those insects which bore their galleries, 

 like pinholes, in old wood. Its history, as far as I am 

 acquainted with it, is as follows : — - On the 28th of July last 

 £1831], at midnight, having entered my bedroom in this town, 

 and laid down my watch, I heard. a, noise as of the ticking of 

 another watch. The noise proceeded from within or under a 

 half sheet of brown paper, in which mould candles had been 

 ■wrapped. The paper lay loosely rolled up on the chimney 

 piece. I placed my ear close to the paper while the insect 

 -was ticking, and although my watch was at the same time 

 beating loudly at the distance of only two feet, I could not 

 distinguish any kind of difference in the ticking of the insect 

 from that of the watch. Occasionally, while the insect was 

 ticking, its ticking would suddenly change into a louder, less 

 acute, and less frequent sound than that of the watch. This 

 latter sound, however, did not continue above twenty or thirty 

 beats at a time, whereas the ticking in unison with the watch 

 would continue without intermission for some minutes. With 

 the exception of a few intervals (and those short ones), 

 the little beetle continued its noise all the time the candle 

 remained burning, which was about a quarter of an hour. As 



