DEATIL -watch, in natural history, a little insect, famous for a ticking noise like the beat of a watch, which the vulgar have long taken for a presage of death in the family where it is heard ; an error that cannot be too often confuted by facts. There are two kinds of death watches. Of the first we have a goo account in the Phil. Trans. of London. It is a small beetle, half an inch long, of a dark brown colour, spotted ; having pellucid wings under the vagina, a large cap or helmet on the head, and two antennae. pro,:eeding from beneath the eyes, and doing the of fice of proboscides. The part it beats with, the writer observes, was the extreme edge of the face, which he calls the up per-lip, the mouth being protracted by this bony part, and lying underneath out of view. This account is confirmed by Dr. Derham, with the difference that, in stead of ticking with the upper-lip, he observed the insect to draw back its mouth and beat with its forehead. That author had two death watches, a male and a female, which he kept alive in a box several months, and could bring one of them to beat whenever he pleased, by imitating its beating. From some cir
cumstances, the ingenious author con cludes those pulsations to be the way whereby these insects woo one another. See PT1NUS.
The second kind of death-watch is an insect, in appearance quite different from the first. The former only beats seven or eight strokes at a time, and quicker ; the latter will beat some hours together without intermission ; and his strokes are more leisurely, and like the beat of a watch. This latter is a small greyish in sect, much like a louse when viewed with the naked eye. It is very common in all parts of the house in the summer months: it is very nimble in running to shelter, and shy of beating when disturbed, but will beat very freely before you, and also answer the beating, if you can view it without giving it disturbance, or shaking the place where it is, &c. See TERMES.