138 DEATH-WATCH BEETLES. 



length, and in its prevailing hues of gray and brown re- 

 sembling the color of the time-worn wood, whose decay they 

 help (especially in their grubhood) to accelerate. That alarm- 

 ing "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 con- 

 sidered analogous 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 observers having been eye as well as ear- 

 witnesses of its performance. 



There are various species of these ticking, or more properly 

 beating, beetles, of the genus Anobium, of which a marked 

 characteristic is the concealment, nearly, of the head beneath 

 the thorax. Amongst these, two noted drummers are distin- 

 guishable by their uniforms in other words, by the markings 

 of their wing-cases, which in one* are striated, in the 

 otherf tessellated. Another, of a plain dark brown (Anobium 

 pertinax). frequent in holes of old wood, has long been famous 

 for its pertinacity in simulating death, and for displaying a 



* Anobium sbriatwin. t A. tessellatum. 



