148 
NATURE NOTES. 
The next creature I tried to learn about was the so-called 
Death-Watch. Even in these enlightened days there are those 
who believe that the tapping sound this insect makes in the 
skirting boards of old houses presages the decease of some 
member of the family. It is curious that this superstition should 
have been found to extend “ from England to Cashmere and 
across India to the remotest nook of Bengal, over three thousand 
miles distance from the entrance of the Indian Punjaub.” * 
I have heard this sound in my old house for many years, but 
I have never been able to capture or even see the insect. There 
is nothing really mysterious about it, since the noise is simply a 
continuous tapping made by a small brown beetle, the Anobnim 
striatum. It lives in old furniture and skirting boards, and as 
the male and female beetle cannot find each other without some 
signal, the male strikes his hard shelled head against the wood, 
the female hears the sound and replies, and thus the amorous 
duets go on, much to the annoyance of the sleepless and suffering. 
Do what we will the little torments persevere : they are beyond 
our reach and nothing will avail to stop the noise, although on 
the other hand if we should wish to set it going, I believe we can 
do so by tapping sharply upon any old wainscot where the 
beetles are known to exist. The Anohium is so formed that it 
can draw its head within the thorax, and retract its legs under 
its bod}' so as to turn itself into an oval pellet ; it can then 
traverse the round tunnels it makes in woodwork. As we desire 
to be a practical society, I may mention that the best mode of 
destroying this annoying pest is to pour corrosive sublimate 
dissolved in spirits of wine into the holes ; this will kill the 
beetles and poison the wood, so as to prevent their future attacks. 
I should like to say a few words about another house dweller, 
the common cheese-mite. It seems rather strange that, whilst 
we protect our dainties from the marauding cockroach, prevent 
weevils from devouring our peas and beans, and guard the flour 
barrel from meal worms, yet by general consent we allow our 
cheese to be the home of a species of fungus, innumerable mites, 
and the grub of a minute fly. Not only do we allow it, but 
most people prefer a mitey cheese as possessing a heightened 
flavour. 
The first glimpse of a mass of cheese-mites through a good 
microscope is somewhat startling ; we perceive a confused mass 
of struggling insects, and the idea of eating them is by no means 
agreeable. I w'ould advise our young members to examine these 
creatures, for they are typical of a very large class of those lower 
forms which have for their object the destruction of substances 
in a state of decay. Were it not for them, these would pollute 
the air. We also find mites destroying specimens in insect- 
cases ; one species is found to inhabit the joints of skeletons, 
Things not Generaliy Known. By J. Timbs. 
