KEMEDY AGAINST PIELD-CKICKETS. 265 



but the stream being wide and swift, the crickets 

 had not crossed it, so our tired animals had a 

 good supper, and we a comfortable camp. I rode 

 off to some farm-enclosures I saw, in search of 

 milk and eggs; and, to my great surprise, I no- 

 ticed every field had a little tin-fence inside the 

 snake or rail fence, about six or eight inches 

 wide, nailed along on a piece of lumber, placed 

 edgeways in the ground, so that a good wide 

 ledge of tin projected towards the prairie. 



'What,' I said to the first farmer I met, 'induces 

 you to put this tin aiFair round your field ? ' 



' Why, stranger, I guess you ain't a-travelled 

 this way much, or you'd be pretty tall sure that 

 them darned blackshirts out on the prairie would 

 eat a hoss and chase the rider. But for that bit of 

 a tin-fixin.' thar, they'd mighty soon make tracks 

 for my field, and just leave her clean as an 

 axe-blade. These critters come about once in 

 four years, and a mighty tall time they have 

 when they do come ! ' 



It was a most effectual and capital contrivance 

 to keep them out, for if they came underneath 

 the tin they jumped up against it, and it was 

 too wide to leap over. These field-crickets 

 (Aclieta nigra] are black, and very much larger 

 than the ordinary house-cricket. They eat 



