6 Furniture Beetles. 



larvae are present, and fresh generations continue to appear, they 

 may in a relatively short period of time reduce the wood almost 

 entirely to a condition of powder or dust, little of the solid tissue 

 being left except a thin outer shell and only so much of it inside 

 as will barely suffice to keep the whole together. 



The species which in this country most commonly prove 

 destructive to furniture and to worked wood in general are 

 limited in number to about five, three of which belong to the 

 family of beetles named Anobiidee, and two to a distinct but not 

 very distantly related family to which the name Lyctidee is given. 

 One of the five species, Anobium punctaium, De Geer {see Frontis- 

 piece and Fig. 1), is so much more frequently met with than the 

 rest, especially in old furniture, that it may, by way of distinction, 

 be referred to as the common furniture beetle. Although often 

 alluded to in books as "the death-watch beetle" or as one of the 

 death-watch beetles, its claim to that title rests on no satisfactory 

 evidence. 



The true " death-watch beetle," which is a member of the same 

 family, is also one of the furniture beetles. It seldom attacks 

 ordinary movable furniture, but is very destructive at times in 

 old houses and other buildings in which oak or chestnut is the 

 wood used in the structure or the fittings. The vast amount of 

 damage caused by its larvae to the old oak rafters and beams in 

 the roof of Westminster Hall is a notable instance of the kind. 



It is in April or May, the time of year when the pairing of the 

 beetles takes place, that their tapping noise * is most oiten heard. 

 The method by which it is produced has frequently been observed, 

 and is quite simple : the beetle jerks its body forwards seven or eight 

 times in rapid succession, and strikes each time with the lower 

 front part of its head against the surface on which it happens to 

 be standing. It gives the eight taps in slightly less than a 

 second of time; and almost before it stops another of the beetles, 

 if within hearing, will respond by tapping back in the same quick 

 manner. In wood-work or furniture that has been attacked by the 

 death-watch beetles, the worm-holes are large and distinguishable 

 also by the character of the frass or powder which falls from them 

 or fills the burrows inside. 



The worm-holes which show at the surface of worm-eaten 

 furniture are but rarely made by the worms or larvae, and then 



♦ The name " death-watch " is also applied to the tiny insect known as 

 the book-louse, and more appropriately, the ticking it makes being slower, 

 less loud, longer continued, and altogether more like that of a watch. 



