386 NOISES OF INSECTS. 
“c ..A wood-worm 
wer eeseseeseseseseese® 
That lies in old wood, like a hare in her form: 
With teeth or with claws it will bite or 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 who 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.” 
To add to the effect of this noise, it is said to be made 
only when there is a profound silence in an apartment, 
and every one is still. | 
Authors were formerly not agreed concerning the in- 
sect from which this sound of terror proceeded, some at- 
tributing it to a kind of wood-louse, as I lately observed, 
and others to a spider; but it is a received opinion now, 
adopted upon satisfactory evidence, that it is produced by 
some little beetles belonging to the timber-boring genus 
Anobium, F. Swammerdam observes, that a small bee- 
tle, which he had in his collection, having firmly fixed its 
fore legs, and put its inflexed head between them, makes a 
continual noise in old pieces of wood, walls, and ceilings, 
which is sometimes so loud, that upon hearing it, peo- 
ple have fancied that hobgoblins, ghosts, or fairies were 
wandering around them?. Evidently this was one of 
the death-watches. Latreille observed Anobium stria- 
tum, F. produce the sound in question by a stroke of its 
mandibles upon the wood, which was answered by a si- 
@ Bibl, Nat, Ed. Hill, i, 125. 
