AND DISTRIBUTE INSECT VAraETY. 31 



in confinement — the only drawback to enclosure being an 

 irascible temperament, which causes them, like savages, to kill 

 and devour one another — it is not so with the House Crickets, 

 who, if they survive removal from the fire, require peculiar 

 management. Roesel recommends procuring a large glass, 

 filling it three-quarters full of earth, and covering the mould 

 with a piece of earthenware having a hole in it, so that the 

 individuals can burrow or not, as they prefer. And in some 

 parts of Africa, where such commodity has market value, the 

 natives find it possible to rear them in hot ovens. The Grass- 

 hoppers and, I conclude, the larger Locusts, will live a little in 

 a vivarium, and, if placed in the sun, chirp a snatch or two ; 

 but they are very ephemeral, and only less so than the CicadiE, 

 which are little adapted for pets, and how the ancients managed 

 to encage them is difficult to understand. May it be that 

 the play of light striking in through the aperture above the 

 impluviura, with the vicinity of fresh flowers and a sparkling 

 fountain^ could place them in congenial conditions where those 

 dewy sprays might be had, said to be as necessary to a Cicada 

 as a bottle to a baby ? They seem, anyway, quite to scorn our 

 ordinar}'- breeding-cage, where they cling together like Bees, 

 and when placed in the window die of sunstroke within a few 

 hours : at least, such was the fate of those I collected among 

 the Superga Hills. 



In conclusion, I may mention that by the first of August the 

 music of the Tettiges had faded from the groves in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Turin ; so, having learnt as much of their habits 

 as I wished, and found by actual dissection the part usually 

 termed the "mirror" in these insects is in reality an organ of 

 hearing, I determined on wending homeward. Several routes 

 were open to me for the return journey. I could either whirl 

 over the dizzy crags and snows of the Simplon or Great St. 

 Bernard, make my way by the Maritime Alps to Genoa or Nice, 

 and thence to Marseilles and Paris ; or I could take the direct 

 route through the bowels of the Simplon, over whose snows 

 and mists the Honourable Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in 

 the beginning of this centur}', was carried in a little seat of 

 twisted osiers fixed on poles upon men''s shoulders, so that she 

 arrived that night at Lyons with a terrible fever. There is 



