DEATH-WATCH, a ticking sound produced by certain insects, inmates of human dwellings, and which, being most readily heard in that stillness which attends times of sickness and anxiety, has become associated with superstitious notions and fears, being regarded as indicative of an approaching death in a house. The most common form Of this very prevalent superstition is the belief that when the death-watch is heard, some member of the household will die within twelve months. The tickings of the death watch were formerly attributed to species of wood-louse and of spider, and it is prob• able that they are not all produced by insects of the same kind; but the most common death-watch of Britain is a species of borer (q.v.), (anobium tesselatum). It is of a dusky or grayish-brown color, and about a quarter of an inch in length. It is generally in summer that its noise is heard, the number of raps given in quick succession varying from several to more than a hundred. These are repeated at uncertain intervals. The
noise exactly resembles that made by beating with the nail upon a table; and when this is done, the insect is not unfrequently induced to reply to it. It is the perfect insect, not the larva, which produces this sound. It seems, indeed, to be a call by which the sexes are attracted to each other, and is produced by the insect's beating upon some hard substance with its head, in doing which it raises itself upon its hind-legs, and with the body somewhat inclined, beats its head with great force and agility against the sub. stance on which it stands. One of them was seen by Mr. Stabkhouse thus to beat upon a sedge-bottomed chair with such force that its strokes made little indentations in the outer coat of the sedge.