Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 159 



1 f Fig. 225. — Thesmall 



glare ot ^i^iped ground - 



hesitate to prey upon a weaker brother when opportunity offers. I have 

 often surprised them feasting on the bodies of their com- 

 panions; and of about forty imprisoned together in a 

 box, at the end of a week but si.x were Hving. The 

 heads, wings, and legs of their dead companions were all 

 that remained to show that the weaker had succumbed 

 to the stronger — that the fittest, and in this case the 

 fattest, had survived in the deadly struggle for existence." 



These crickets live in cracks in the soil, or under 

 stones or logs, or sometimes make burrows. 



The genus Nemobius contains a number of little 

 crickets known as "striped ground-crickets," which are 

 less than half an inch long, are dusky brownish with hairy 

 head and thorax, and have faint blackish longitudinal 

 stripes on the head. "Unlike their larger cousins, the 

 field-crickets, they do not wait for darkness before seek- 

 ing their food, but wherever the grass has been cropped 

 short, whether on shaded hillside in the full 

 the noonday sun along the beaten roadway, mature speci- cricket, 'Nemobius 



mens may be seen by hundreds during the davs of early lasctaius: ioTmvii- 

 ■' ■' . talus, female, (.^fter 



autumn." They are powerful jumpers and readily evade Lugger; about 



attempts to capture them. They feed on living vegetation ^vike natural size.) 

 and on all kinds of decaying animal matter, and because of 

 their abundance and voracious appetite must do much 

 damage at times. Scudder gives the following account of 

 the singing of the wingless striped cricket, Nemobius villains 

 (Fig. 225), our commonest species: "The chirping of the 

 striped cricket is very similar to that of the black field-cricket, 

 and may be expressed by r-r-r-n, pronounced as though it 

 were a French word. The note is trilled forcibly, and lasts 

 a variable length of time. One of these insects was once 



Fig. 226. — The observed while singing to its mate. At first the song was 

 ^" I^I^rF'^'^'^' ^^'^ and frequently broken; afterwards it grew impetuous, 

 thus niveus. forcible, and more prolonged; then it decreased in volume 

 (Natural size.) ^^j extent until it became quite soft and feeble. .\t this 



point the male began to approach 



the female, uttering a series of 



twittering chirps; the female ran 



away, and the male, after a .short 



chase, returned to his old haunt, 



. , , . , , Fig. 227. — (Ecanthus jascwtus, female, (.^fler 



smgmg with the same vigor, but Lugger; natural size indicated by line.) 



