154 THE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



of its younger stages. Dean Swift's fame was not derived from 

 his knowledge of insects, and it is improbable that he knew 

 more on the subject than they did, when in 1725, he introduced 

 the " wood-worm " in his well-known lampoon on Will Wood,* 

 and said of it : 



" With teeth or with jaws it will bite or will scratch, 

 And chambermaids christen this worm a death-watch." 



The idea that the noise heard was due to the biting or 

 scratching of the insects or their larvte inside the wood was 

 not confined to Dean Swift's chambermaids nor to his time. 

 That idea was entertained at a later neriod by Olivier and 

 several other entomologists, who considered it more reason- 

 able than to believe that the beetle could produce the noise 

 by tapping against the wood witli its head. W^estwood 

 relates that he used to hear all through the winter a ticking 

 noise coming from a chimney-piece infected with A. striatum, 

 and this noise, because of the time of year, he attributed to 

 the working of the jaws of the larvae while gnawing in the 

 wood. As I doubt very much whether such a noise could be 

 made in that way, or, if made, could be heard at any appreciable 

 distance, I have ventured to suggest that what he heard may 

 have been the little book-louse, which, in the beetle-infested 

 chimney-boards of an entomologist's study, would have found 

 conditions well suited to its mode of life. 



In ' Zeitschrift f. wiss. Insektenbiologie ' for 1910, there is 

 a very interesting paper by Mr. Jensen-Haarup, on " Anobium 

 pertinax and barometrical minima," in which the Danish 

 entomologist claims for this beetle, which he says is known 

 in Jutland as the " Kneewerstork " from the noise it makes, 

 like that of a stork with its beak, that it is a very good weather 

 prophet. Its ticking is usually heard in the autumn and winter, 

 and is most vigorous just before and after a storm, and will, 

 in fact, indicate the coming of a storm, before even the 

 barometer begins to fall. The author's later and more accurate 

 observations were, he tells ns, made after several years' travel 

 abroad, when he had returned with his insect collections and 

 was settled in a new house where he hoped to work them out 

 in quietness. But he gives no evidence to show that the 

 ticking he heard was actually due to " the little boring beetle," 

 or, if it were, that he had correctly identified the species. The 

 ticking appears to have been very faint ; for, in inviting 

 entomologists to take up the investigation of the remarkable 

 connection between the insect's ticking and the atmospheric 

 conditions, he says that only those living in tlie country' could 

 be successful, as the noise would not be sufficiently well heard 

 in a large town. 



* The patentee of the Irish "brass" coinage, against whom Swift's invective 

 ■was directed. 



