THE DEATHWATCH. 121 



received the somewhat ominous name of the Death- 

 watch, and a superstitious feeling is attached to it, 

 which is ludicrously described by Swift in the fol- 

 lowing lines. After telling us that — 



" Chambermaids christen this Worm a Deathwatch, 

 Because hke a Watch it always cries Click : " 



he proceeds — 



" Then woe be to those in the house who are sick : 

 For as sure as a gun they will give up the ghost. 

 If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post." 



It is still a question whether the '' maggot ^' has the 

 power of producing this curious noise as Avell as its 

 parent, but there is no doubt that in many places the 

 ticking of the Deathwatch is still regarded as ominous 

 of death, and doubtless the remedy mentioned by the 

 old Dean of St. Patrick^s in the lines following those 

 above quoted, of pouring a kettle of hot water into 

 a hole in the wainscot, has often been adopted, to 

 the great benefit of the patient who was supposed to 

 be the object of the malevolent visitation. 



With the insects just referred to, we take leave of 

 the long series of Beetles in which the tarsi are all 

 usually composed of five joints ; in the tribes whose 

 characters we have still to examine, we find the num- 

 ber of joints in those organs departing more and 

 more from what we must regard as the normal struc- 

 ture of the order. This divergence is least in the 

 beetles of the two next tribes, in which the four 

 anterior tarsi are still composed of five joints, whilst 

 the hinder pair only consist of fom- articulations'^. 



* These insects form the section Heteromera of Latreille and 

 many other authors. 



Q 



