INSECT VARIETY. 139 



that the insect ''lifted up itself on its hinder legs, and some- 

 what extending, or rather inclining* its neck, beat down its face,''' 

 and Stackhouse declares the sedge of a chair where one was 

 beating was depressed, ''for about the compass of a silver penny/^ 

 When the beetles were placed in the sun they attempted to fly. 

 Rude magnified figures of the Death-watch Beetle are appended 

 to the descriptions. These accounts seem to have provoked 

 the muse of Swift, who probably had in mind the sophistry of 

 one of these savants, "that he had known the noise to be 

 heard by many when no mortality followed, and had taken 

 two seven years since without any death following that year.''' 



The story of the ticking of the Death-watches recorded in 

 these now venerable volumes seems to be in the main very 

 accurate, as it has been of late years served up and re-served, 

 to the popular taste in entomological magazines with little 

 variation or addition. Certain is it that the Death-watch 

 Beetles exhibit the phenomena of love and rivalry by re- 

 sponding to each other^s ticking, and by answering their notes 

 approximated by a tap of the finger-nail. Male doubtless 

 challenges male, but the female attracts the male. Darwin 

 says that Mr. Doubleday twice or thrice observed a female 

 [A. tessellatum) , ticking, and in the course of an hour or two 

 found her united with a male, and on one occasion surrounded 

 by several males. This is the view taken by the contri- 

 butors to the "Philosophical Transactions.''' Dereham, 

 in the month of May kept two of these little creatures in a 

 box in his study, a male and a female, and proved that it 

 was the call of the female seeking a partner, for he not only 

 got the couple to answer an imitation of their " beating,^'' 

 artificially produced with the finger-nail, the male very freely 

 and the female rather reluctantly, but when the beating of 

 the former at times got very eager, he actually observed them 

 to pair. 



These species of Anobium beat in any position, with a move- 

 ment like that of the Pendulum Crane Fly, oscillating their 

 bodies up and down. They are heard in May and July, and 

 beat for a week or a fortnight pi'evious to pairing. A. tes- 

 sellatum beats seven to eleven strokes at uncertain intervals, 

 and another kind, possibly striatum, six to eight, or vice versa. 



