82 INSECT MISCELLANIES, 



cricket, they are sometimes kept for their music ; and 

 the learned Scaliger took so great a fancy to their 

 song that he was accustomed to keep them in a box 

 in his study. It is reported that in some parts of 

 Africa they are kept and fed in a kind of iron oven, 

 and sold to the natives, who like their chirp, and think 

 it is a good soporific.* Milton chose for his contem- 

 plative pleasures a spot where crickets resorted : — 



' Where glowing embers through the room 

 Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, 

 Far from all resort of mirth, 

 Save the cricket on the hearth.' — II Penseroso. 



We have been as unsuccessful in transplanting the 

 hearth-cricket as White was with the field-crickets. 

 In two different houses we have repeatedly intro- 

 duced crickets, but could not prevail on them to stay. 

 One of our trials, indeed, was made in summer, with 

 insects brought from a garden wall, and it is pro- 

 bable they thought the kitchen fireside too hot at 

 that season.! 



The instrument upon which the male cricket plays 

 (for the female is mute) consists, as in the preceding 

 case, of strong nervures or rough strings in the wing- 

 cases, by the friction of which against eacli otlier a 

 sound is produced and communicated to the mem- 

 branes stretched between them, in the same way that 

 the vibrations caused by the friction of the finger 

 upon the tambourine are diffused over its surface. 

 We deem this explanation the more necessary, as it 

 is erroneously stated in a popular work, ' That the 

 organ is a membrane, which in contracting, by means 

 of a muscle and tendon placed under the wings of 

 the insect, folds down somewhat like a fan ; ' and 

 this being ' always dry, yields by its motion a sharp 

 piercing sound. 'J 



* MoufFet, Theatrura Insect. 136, 'i J. R. 



I Bingley, Anim. Biog. , iv, 54 ; 6th ed. 



