Beetles 
271 
are slender white active grubs with a brown head and brownish patches 
above and two small hooks at the end of the body. They feed on the meat 
until full-grown, when they either burrow deeper into the meat or come out 
and bore into the wooden receptacle holding it, and make a glistening paper¬ 
like cocoon within which they pupate. 
The family Ptinidae is composed of small obscure brownish beetles that 
would never attract our attention at all were it not for the injurious food- 
habits of many of the species. The family includes a hundred and fifty 
species, and among them a few notorious pests of rather unusual tastes. 
As the Ptinids mostly live on dead and dry vegetable matter, it was not 
improbable when I began a collecting expedition in a d ug-store that I should 
find a number of specimens of this family. But to find a majority of the 
canisters and jars containing vegetable 
drugs in the condition of roots, stems, 
leaves, etc., infested by beetles of this 
family was unexpected. The most 
abundant species on this collecting- 
ground was Sitrodrepa panicea (Fig. 
373), which we may well call the ‘‘drug¬ 
store beetle.” It was found to be 
attacking blue-flag rhizome, comfrey- 
root, dogbane-root, ginger-rhizome, 
marshmallow-root, aniseed, aconite-tuber (deadly poison to us!), musk-root, 
Indian-turnip rhizome, belladonna-root, witch-hazel leaves, powdered coffee- 
seed, wormwood stems, flowers and leaves, thorn-apple leaves, cantharides 
(dried bodies of blister-beetles), and thirty other different drugs! Larvae, 
pupae, and adults were side by side in most of the canisters. Ptinus brun- 
neus, a larger Ptinid, was in half a dozen jars, and the cigarette-beetle, 
Lasiderma serricorne , suggestively named, though it feeds on tobacco in 
almost any form, was living contentedly in a jar of powdered ergot. 
“Death-watch” is a name popularly applied to several species of Ptinids 
because of their habit of rapping their heads so sharply against wood in 
which they are burrowing as to make a regular tapping or ticking sound. 
This name is claimed by species of Anobium, tiny, robust, hard-bodied, cin¬ 
namon-colored beetles, inch long, and also by Sitrodrepa panicea , our 
drug-store beetle. Comstock records finding this species breeding in 
large numbers in an old book, a copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, printed 
in 1536. Librarians would call the beetle a “bookworm.” 
Besides the small members of the family which feed on dried foods, 
drugs, etc., there are a few larger species of very different habits, although 
also destructive. The apple-twig borer, Amphicerus bicaudatus, -J inch 
long, dark chestnut-brown above and black beneath, is the best known of 
Fig. 373.—The drug-store beetle, Sitro¬ 
drepa panicea, larva pupa, and adults. 
(After Howard and Marlatt; much 
enlarged.) 
