Because their eyes are organised to bear only a small amount of light. When, therefore, they come within the light of a candle, their sight is overpowered and their vision confused; and as they cannot distinguish objects, they pursue the light itself, and fly against the flame.
"Let him that glorieth glory in this that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord which exercise loving-kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord."—Jer. ix.
1300. Why do insects multiply so numerously?
Because they form the food of larger animals, and especially of birds. A single pair of sparrows and a nest of young ones have been estimated to consume upwards of three thousand insects in a week.
1301. Why does the "death-watch" make a ticking noise?
Because the insect is one of the beetle tribe, having a horny case upon its head, with which it taps upon any hard substance, the ticking is the call of the insect to its species, just as the noise made by the cricket is a note of communication with other crickets.
There is a superstition connected with the death-watch, which, like most superstitions, is based upon the theory of probabilities. The death-watch is usually heard in the spring of the year, and a superstition runs to the effect that some one in the house will die before the year has ended. Persons who are superstitious are never very strict in the interpretation of their predictions; and therefore, whether a person dies in the house or out of it, in the same room where the death-watch was heard, or across the wide Atlantic, so that there be some kind of relationship, or even acquaintance, between the person who hears the omen, and the person dying, the event is sure to be connected with the prophetic sounds of the death-watch. Little weens the small timber-boring beetle, when he is tapping gently to call his mate, and perhaps peeping into every corner and crevice to find her, that he is sending dismay into the heart of some superstitious listener, who, in ignorance of a simple fact, overwhelms herself with an imaginary grief.