INSECTS 267 



to stuffed specimens. Nearly allied is the museum-beetle {Anthrenus musceorwm), 

 which is one-eighth of an inch long ; its colour is blackish brown, striated with 

 rusty scales ; the sides of the thorax and three cross-bands on the elytra bearing 

 whitish scales, while the legs are reddish. It takes its name from the fact of the 

 larva being so destructive to natural history collections, especially insects ; the 

 beetle often taking up a position near the joints of cases which it enters in order 

 to deposit its eggs on the bodies of stuffed animals. Another noxious beetle 

 (Corynetes violaceus) is cosmopolitan, living in houses on meat, and in the open 

 air on carcases, but also frequenting flowers, where it eats insects and their larvae. 

 Bright sliining blue in colour, it is covered with fine down, and has the antenna? 

 black with pale bars, and the legs greenish brown. 



The so-called wood-worms, which bore holes in wood, at the 



Death Wa tcb etc 



same time often transforming the substance of the latter into powder, 

 develop into beetles having a hard, horny, oblong, ovate body, a swollen thorax, 

 and elytra embracing the abdomen. In one group the larva? are blind and 

 covered with short hair and a number of little protuberances. A familiar species 

 is the death-watch beetle (Anobium pertinax), which is dusky black in colour, 

 with the thorax convex, covered with down, and bearing posteriorly a bifurcating 

 ridge ; on each of its hind angles is a tuft of yellow hairs, and the legs are dull red. 

 This beetle is about one-sixth of an inch long, and bores in old furniture. The 

 male, standing on its two hinder pairs of legs, knocks with its head against the 

 wood, and thus produces a sound similar to the ticking of a watch, which is 

 answered in like fashion by the female. In former times superstition regarded 

 the ticking of this beetle as an omen of approaching death. The death-watch is 

 also called the stiff-necked beetle, because at the slightest touch it draws in its legs 

 and pretends to be dead, not even changing its attitude if pricked by a needle or 

 burnt in a flame. The same may be said of several other beetles of this group, 

 especially the streaked wood-beetle (A. striatum), which much resembles the 

 preceding species, although only half its size and with a dorsal channel and a 

 triangular ridge on the thorax. This beetle abounds in old houses, where its 

 larva? busy themselves in making small cylindrical holes in old furniture and 

 fittings. The bread-borer (A. paniceum), which rejects wood in favour of substances 

 containing sugar or starch, is dull red in colour with black eyes and a convex 

 thorax, the elytra being spotted and streaked, with rounded tips. It is often found 

 in houses, in stale bread and pastry, and is especially abundant on board ship 

 among the biscuit-stores. 



Some beetles of this group feed on animal as well as vegetable matter ; that 

 common species in houses, Ptinus fur, being one. It is about one-eighth of an 

 inch long, rusty brown in colour, and covered with white down. The antenna?, 

 which like the legs are rusty red, are inserted below the eyes, and the body is 

 elliptical. The female is stouter than the male, and has two interrupted whitish 

 bands across the elytra. The larva thrives on dried skins and stufl'ed animals 

 and plant specimens — in fact, anything in a collection ; as well as in warehouses, 

 shops and cupboards, wherever there are dried stalks and roots. Another member 

 of the group follows man on account of the wood he uses. This is the wharf -beetle 

 Lymcxylon navale), famous in a way as the one Linnaeus discovered to be the 



