WOOD-BORING BEETLES 13 



congeners in so peculiar a way. It can scarcely be 

 merely a sexual distinction, but seems to point to some 

 greater acuteness in the organs of sense, perhaps necessi- 

 tated by the fact that the female rarely leaves her 

 burrows, only advancing to the entrance thereof to 

 receive the addresses of her lord and master, who, on 

 his part, remains on the outside, and conducts his court- 

 ship from that position. It is a curious fact that the 

 males of certain moths, which have similarly complex 

 antennae, possess also a marvellous power, quite inde- 

 pendent of sight, of detecting, even from great distances, 

 the presence of a virgin female of their own species. 



Ptilinus is sometimes terribly destructive to timber; 

 and apparently the most remarkable instance on record 

 of this undesirable characteristic is one given by West- ' 

 wood, who states that a perfectly new bed-post (those 

 were the days of the great four-posters that lumbered 

 up our fathers' bed-chambers) was, in the space of three 

 years, completely destroyed by countless numbers of 

 these insects. But such depredations are necessarily 

 becoming more and more things of the past, and in 

 these days of iron bedsteads, &c., Ptilinus, and others 

 of that ilk, must be beginning to find that they have 

 fallen on evil times, and that the conditions of life are 

 not nearly so favourable as they used to be in the happy 

 days of old. I have found it also in a printing-office, 

 where, in the abundance of wooden "plant" stored up, 

 it must have discovered a perfect mine of wealth. 



Anobium domesticum is not the only representative of 

 that genus in our household fauna ; another is A. pani- 

 ceum, a shorter and broader insect of somewhat paler 

 colour. It is almost omnivorous in its tastes, attacking 

 any sort of vegetable substance that may fall in its way, 

 though less of a wood-borer than its relative. Such things 



