It is only the female Glowworm which produces the beautiful light for which the insect is so well known, and she frequently communicates this light to her eggs. She is without wings or wing-cases, and possesses no beauty when seen by daylight. The male has wings, and leathery elytra. The larva is a very ugly and very voracious grub, which feeds greedily on snails and slugs.
THE DEATH-WATCH. (Anobium tesselatum.)
This creature is called the Death-Watch, from a superstitious notion that, when its beating is heard, it is a sign that some one in the house is going to die. The insect lives in wood, and the noise is produced by its striking its head against whatever is near it. These insects, in the larva state, do a great deal of mischief to old furniture, in which they perforate numerous round holes. To enable them to do this they are furnished with two maxillæ formed like two cutting pincers, with the help of which they bore the holes so neatly that the French call them vrillettes, from vrille, a gimlet. They also perforate books in the same way, and thus do much damage in old libraries:
“Insatiate brute, whose teeth abuse
The sweetest servants of the muse!
His roses nipt in every page,
My poor Anacreon mourns thy rage;
By thee my Ovid wounded lies;
By thee my Lesbia’s sparrow dies;
Thy rabid teeth have half destroyed
The work of love in Biddy Floyd;
They rent Belinda’s locks away,
And spoiled the Blouzelind of Gay;
For all, for every single deed,
Relentless justice bids thee bleed.
Then fall a victim to the Nine,
Myself the priest, my desk the shrine.”
Parnell.
Sometimes two of these insects may be heard ticking, answering each other; and sometimes the Death-Watch may be made to tick by tapping with the finger-nail upon a table. These creatures imitate death with great exactness when they are caught, or when they think themselves in danger.