BEETLES, BOOKWORMS AND DEATH-WATCHES 227 



strikes the mind with a vague terror, like the sudden 

 cracks of dry timber, or the dripping of unseen water, 

 and what is really no more than the call of a minute beetle 

 has come to be feared as a warning of death ; hence the 

 name of death-watch, given to the Anobiums and some 

 other insects, which make a noise like that of a watch. 

 The late Frederick Smith of the British Museum tells 

 us that, having received two live examples of Anobium 

 tesselatum from Mr. Doubleday, with full instructions, 

 he tapped the table several times in rapid succession with 

 a lead pencil, when the beetles raised themselves on their 

 front legs, and bobbing their heads up and down, struck 

 the bottom of the box in which they were kept with their 

 mandibles. This performance he could set up almost at 

 pleasure ; the number of the taps was usually four or 

 five. 1 In the state of nature the furniture-beetles excavate 

 living or dead trees, usually running their galleries in 

 the sap-wood. 



" Notwithstanding the obscurity and retirement of their 

 life, these wood-boring beetles have not managed to 

 escape the attacks of parasites. Several species of 

 ichneumon-flies and other allied insects prey upon them ; 

 and the delicate little gauzy-winged persecutors may 

 sometimes be seen running about hither and thither over 

 Anobium-infested wood, in maternal anxiety to find a 

 suitable nidus for their brood. Some, too large to enter 

 the burrows, are furnished with a long ovipositor with 

 which to reach their victims, into whose bodies they insert 

 their eggs. Others are small enough to enter the burrows 

 bodily, and hunt their prey like a ferret after a rabbit. 

 One of these latter, Theocolax formiciformis, superficially 

 something like a minute ant, in consequence of the absence 

 of wings, I have obtained in considerable numbers from a 

 colony of Anobium domesticum which had established 

 themselves in an old aquarium stand." 2 



1 nf. Month. Mag., May, 1867. 



8 E. A. Butler, Our Household Insects^ p. 11 (1893). 



