CHAPTER III. 



THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE COCKROACH. 



SPECIAL REFERENCES. 



HUMMEL. Essais Entomologiques, No. 1 (1821). 

 CORNELIUS. Beitrage zur niihern Kenntniss von Periplaneta orientalis (1853.) 



GIRARD. La domestication des Blattes. Bull. Soc. d' Acclimatisation, 3 e Ser., 

 Tom. IV., p. 296 (1877). 



Range. 



THE common Cockroach is native to tropical Asia,* and long 

 ago made its way by the old trade-routes to the Mediterranean 

 countries. At the end of the sixteenth century it appears to 

 have got access to England and Holland, and has gradually 

 spread thence to every part of the world. 



Perhaps the first mention of this insect in zoological literature 

 occurs in Moufet's Insectorum Theatrum (1634), where he 

 speaks of the Blattse as occurring in wine cellars, flour mills, &c., 

 in England. It is hard to determine in all cases of what insects 

 he is speaking, since one of his rude woodcuts of a " Blatta" is 

 plainly Blaps mortisaga ; another is, however, recognisable as 

 the female of P. orientalis; a third, more doubtfully, as the male 

 of the same species. He tells how Sir Francis Drake took the 

 ship " Philip," f laden with spices, and found a great multitude 

 of winged Blattoo on board, " which were a little larger, softer, 

 and darker than ours." Perhaps these belonged to the American 

 species, but the description is obscure. Swammerdam also was 

 acquainted with our Cockroach as an inhabitant of Holland 

 early in the seventeenth century. He speaks of it as "insectum 



* Linnaeus was certainly mistaken in his remark (Syst. Nat., 12th ed.) that this 

 species is native to America, and introduced to the East "Habitat in America: 

 hospitatur in Oriente. " He adds, " Hodie in Russia? ad jacentibus regionibus frequens ; 

 incepit nuperis temporibus Holmite, 1739, uti dudum in Finlandia." 



1" This must have been the "San Felipe," a Spanish East Indiaman, taken in 1587. 

 See Motley, United Netherlands, Vol. II., p. 283. 



C 



