124 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



are inclined to believe, that the death-watch beetles which have 

 proved so destructive to the roof of Westminster Hall, were 

 at work there more than four hundred ytais ago, it is at least 

 safe to say that death-watches of one kind or the other have 

 been with us since long before the days of Chaucer ; and it 

 would be of interest to know where and when the name first 

 occurs in English literature. The earliest reference to it that 

 I have come acros.s is one (for which I am iridebted to the 

 'New English Dictionary') in a work dated 1668. 'An Essay 

 towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language,' by 

 John Wilkins, D.D., Dean of Ripon, and a Fellow of the Royal 

 Society, is, in spite of its unattractive title, a book of consider- 

 able historical interest to entomologists and other students of 

 Natural History ; although I have nowhere seen it even 

 mentioned in connection with the history of entomology in 

 this country. It is probably the first book in the English 

 language in which an attempt has been made to airange the 

 insects and other animals in some sort of systematic order ; 

 but for whatever merit the arrangement may possess, the credit 

 is doubtless due to Francis Willughby, whose assistance in 

 drawing up the tables is frenly acknowleelged by the author. 



In one of those tables, where the " sheathed-winged insects, 

 commonly called beetles or scarabs " are divided up into sections 

 according as their coverings are "thick, strong, and horny," 

 or "thin, weak, and flexile," and so on into minor groups, we 

 find the name of the "Death-watch" appearing; and this 

 beetle, to which also the name " S. domesticus" is given, 

 distinguished as " that of a long, slender body,* frequent about 

 houses, making a noise like the minute of a watch, by striking 

 the bottom of his breast against his bellyJ'' 



A very similar explanation of the manner in which the noise 

 is produced is given ni Ray's posthumous ' Historia Insectorum,' 

 p. 92 (1710), but the author there goes on to say that he did 

 not quite understand how it could be produced in that way, 

 and expresses his belief that the beetle makes the noise by 

 knocking its head against the body on which it rests. The 

 breast-structure described by him as that of the death-watch 

 beetle was, in fact, that of a click-beetle or Elaterid, and hence 

 the mistaken idea about how the sound was produced. 



It was in 1669, a year after Wilkins's book was published, 

 that Swammerdam ('Hist. Ins.,' p. 127), gave an account of 

 the noise made by the little Scarabaeus, which he named " Hooft 

 Klopperken," and sonicephalus. 



Three years later, in a paragraph, added for the first time 

 in the sixth edition (1672) of his ' Vulgar Errors,' Sir Thomas 

 Browne gave a fuller and more interesting account of the 

 death-watch, from which the following extract is taken: 



• As compared with the Lady-Cow, which is "of a more short, round; 

 figure." 



