DEATH-WATCH BEETLES. 327 



the increased cultivation of the latter, the death's head has 

 become of late years less scarce than formerly. 



The caterpillar is said to feed also on hemp, elder, and the 

 woody nightshade. It is mentioned in the " Cambridge Chro- 

 nicle" of September 1846, that Mr. Demny took twenty of 

 the full-grown larva? from off a tea-tree, growing on the top of 

 a house at the back of Downing-terrace, all of which he 

 successfully reared into splendid specimens of their kind. 



These caterpillars, as well as various others, are apt to elude 

 the search of the collector by taking refuge during day-time 

 from the sun's rays and the darts of ichneumon-flies, not merely 

 under the leaves they feed on, but in the earth beneath them. 

 To the same bed they retire towards the end of August or 

 beginning of September, and, forming therein their smooth 

 untapestried chambers, put off their gay attire for chrysalidan 

 covers. From these, as we have seen, they burst in autumn, 

 harbingers of wintry death, at least to the vegetable world. 



The ominous Death-watch, when drawn from its hiding- 

 place in old perforated floor or wainscot, picture-frame, chest, 

 or black-lettered volume, comes forth (a mouse from a moun- 

 tain of fear !) a tiny beetle of some quarter of an inch in length, 

 and in its prevailing hues of grey and brown resembling 

 the colour of the time-worn wood, whose decay they help 

 (especially in their grubhood) to accelerate. That alarming 

 " tick," to which at midnight many a timorous heart has beat 

 in unison, is generally to be heard first in May, and on to 

 autumn, by day as well as night, and, being considered analo- 

 gous in purpose to the " call " of pairing birds, has, in reality, 

 as little of ominous about it. The sound is not vocal, but 

 consists of a series of quick successive beats, produced, usually, 

 by the striking of the insect's mailed head upon the hard 

 substance whereon it may be standing, or into which it has 

 penetrated, most likely, while a grub. Some have supposed 

 the grub itself to be the drummer, but, if this sometimes be 

 the case, the perfect beetle is a drummer too, various accurate 



