1896.] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. f^^ 



THE "DEATH-WATCH" BEETLE. 



The common name of Death-watch, given to Xestobium tes- 

 selatmn, sufficiently announces the popular prejudice against this 

 insect; and so great is this prejudice, that, as says an editor of 

 Cuvier's works, the fate of many a nervous and superstitious 

 patient has been accelerated by listening, in the silence and soli- 

 tude of night, to this imagined knell of his approaching dissolu- 

 tion. The learned Sir Thomas Browne considered the supersti- 

 tion connected with the Death-watch of great importance, and 

 remarks that "the man who could eradicate this error from the 

 minds of the people would save from many a cold sweat the 

 meticulous heads of nurses and grandmothers," for such persons 

 are firm in the belief that the solemn Death-watch clicks the hour 

 of death. 



The witty Dean of St. Patrick endeavored to perform this 

 useful task by means of ridicule. And his description, suggested, 

 it would appear, by the old song of " A cobbler there was, and 

 he lived in a stall," runs thus: 



A wood worm 



That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form. 



With teeth or with claws, it will bite, it will scratch; 



And chambermaids christen this worm a Death-watch, 



Because, like a watch, it always cries click. 



Then woe be to those in the house that are sick ! 



For, sure as a gun, they will give up the ghost, 



If the maggot cries click when it scratches the post. 



But a kettle of scalding hot water injected, 



Infallibly cures the timber affected; 



The omen is broken, the danger is over. 



The maggot will die, and the sick will recover. 



Grose, in his "Antiquities," thus expi esses this superstition: 

 ' ' The clicking of a Death-watch is an omen of the death of some 

 one in the house wherein it is heard." W„tts says: " We learn 

 to presage approaching death in a family by ravens and little 

 worms, which we therefore call a Death-watch." Gray, in one 

 of his Pastorals, thus alludes to it: 



When Blonzelind expired, 



The solemn Death-watch click'd the hour she died. 



" It will take," says Mrs. Taylor, a writer in " Harper's New- 

 Monthly Magazine" (vol. xxiii, 775,) " a force unknown at the 

 present time to physiological science to eradicate the feeling of 



