140 THE CAUSES WHICH PROPAGATE 



The idea that the Death-watches actually strike the substance 

 on which they rest with their jaws, head, or thorax, is, I 

 believe, the only one rife in this country, but from this Herr 

 Westring" dissents, and considers the spectral ticking to be a 

 species of stridulation, finding- a lima in a little channel beneath 

 the apex of the elytra, that may be rubbed by a central 

 minutely elevated portion, of a terminal, indurated, apical, and 

 dorsal plate of the abdomen, apparently. A. pertinax and the 

 above two species all tick in the same fashion, and all alike 

 pertinaciously simulate death on seizure, by drawing in their 

 limbs; so that we have thus manifestation of the phenomena 

 of love and rivalry in beetles of small dimensions, which also 

 evince, in high degree, the perception of fear, by muscular con- 

 traction. 



The dull, mottled, or diamond-sparkling pachydermatous 

 Weevils [Curculionidce) that dwell in porcine flocks on flowery 

 spikes, cling tenaciously as glued on twigs, or move slowly and 

 sloth-like on the branches of trees, seem to oppose a principle 

 of obstinacy to the assaults of time and tide. At the gentlest 

 touch they evince a perception of fear, becoming passive, or 

 if loosed from their hold they find concealment by drawing 

 in their legs with an iron clutch, and contracting their snout- 

 like heads into a groove, when they assume the aspect of a 

 round ball, shapeless, motionless, and inanimate, scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable from a neighbouring flower-bud, seed, or patch of 

 grey lichen. The species are often highly vindictive, despite the 

 small size of the mandibles, and their disadvantageous position 

 at the extremity of the rostrum. Some stridulate from alarm, 

 when shaken or submitted to a slight pressure, and others do 

 so when recovering from their first swoon. The lima is placed 

 on the anal, on the last segment but one of the abdomen, 

 or beneath the apex of the elytra — the latter position is most 

 frequent. They are questionably considered the oldest of cole- 

 optera, but seem at least tracealjle to the fir-clad secondary 

 period of geologists. 



Dr. Lister, who has left an account of a trip to Paris under- 

 taken in the reign of Queen Anne, was also a naturalist, and had 

 remarked the creaking noise of Cryptorhynchus lapathi, L. 

 a black and white weevil that crawls on willows and decayed 



