14 Furniture Beetles. 



same kinds, are, on the average, slightly larger. This species does 

 not, however, so frequently attack furniture, although many cases 

 of damage are on record, including one in which a new bedstead 

 is said to have been completely reduced to powder by the larvae 

 in three years. The beetles (Fig. 4) are cylindrical in form and 

 dark brown in colour. Their wing-cases are not punctured in 

 rows nor striate, and their antennae have so characteristic a shape 

 that the species becomes easily recognisable. They appear towards 

 the end of May and in June, and their life-history, so far as it is 

 known, is on the whole very similar to that of the common 

 furniture beetle. The larvae, in their later stages at least, are 

 distinguishable by the presence of groups of very minute brown 

 spinules on the sides of certain of the body-segments, as well as 

 scattered irregularly, forming indefinite bands, across the back. 

 No eyes are visible ; but observations on the newly hatched larvae 

 appear not to have been made, nor have the eggs been described. 



The Death-watch Beetle. Xestobivm rufovillosum, De Geer 

 (= tessellatum Oliv.). {See Kg. 1, c.) 



The beetles of this species begin to make their appearance 

 outside the wood they infest about a month earlier than the 

 common furniture beetle, April and May being the months in 

 which they are most abundant and their tapping most vigorous. 

 It appears, however, that they do not, like the common furniture 

 beetles, bore their way out very soon after their emergence from 

 the pupae, but having emerged one year, remain within the pupal 

 cells through the winter until the following spring, and then make 

 their exit from the wood". Their 'exit holes vary from abolit one-^ 

 eighth to one-sixth of an inch in diameter. 



The beetles are from one-fourth to one-third of an inch in 

 length, and are dark brown in colour, spotted or banded irregularly 

 with thick patches of short yellow-grey hairs. Seen through a 

 lens, the upper surface, where bare, being densely covered with 

 punctures, has an appearance hke shagreen. The prothorax, 

 convex above, slopes down towards the broadly flanged sides, 

 the latter suggesting what one of the first writers to describe the 

 death-watch beetle, was mistakenly led to call its ears. 



It seems hardly possible to doubt that these beetles possess 

 the sense of hearing; but where the organs of that sense 'are- 

 lodged is another question. It is generally believed that they 

 reside in the antennae. 



The tapping to which we have already referred, made in the 



