INSECT VARIETY. 185 



in passing tlirougli a country abounding in these insects, to hear 

 the songs cease as you advance. But if you confine a male and 

 female in a box, they soon become familiar, and an opportunity 

 is afforded of observing their amours, and listening to their song. 

 It is a good plan to shut up two males and one female, for the 

 jealousy between the former makes them redouble their ardour. 

 They at first keep at some distance, and call the female with 

 loud songs ; when they meet they fight, seizing each other with 

 their strong jaws. Mostly one of them falls a victim, and is 

 devoured. ^^ 



Whether the house-cricket be indigenous and degenerate, or 

 whether it be an imported insect, is a question ; for, although it is 

 accused of living in garden walls, cracks in the earth, and hedge- 

 banks during the summer, in the autumn, as far as my ex- 

 perience goes, it does not survive a removal from the fire. Its 

 powers of burrowing are small, and if not enfeebled by domesti- 

 cation, it is i^robable that it is its nature to seek some such ready 

 concealment as a crack or fissure. At all events, the history of 

 its introduction into houses forms an interesting problem that 

 awaits solution. The male cricket does not arrive at the j^erfect 

 state, and begin its song, till the latter portion of the year, and 

 sings during the autumn and through the winter months, thus 

 surviving the oviposition of the female and fresh brood that 

 emerges in October. 



"Tender insects," says Gilbert White, "that live abroad, 

 either enjoy only the short period of one summer, or else doze 

 away the cold uncomfortable months in profound slumbers ; but 

 these, residing as it were in a torrid zone, are always alert and 

 merry ; a good Christmas fire is to them like the heats of the 

 dog-days. Though they are frequently heard by day, yet is 

 their natural time of motion only in the night. As soon as it 

 grows dusk, the chirping increases, and they come running forth, 

 and are from the size of a flea to that of their full stature. As 

 one should suppose, from the burning atmosphere which they 

 inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and show a great propensity for 

 liquids, being found frequently drowned in pans of water, milk, 

 broth, or the like. 



" In the summer we have observed them to fly when it be- 

 came dusk out of the windows and over the neiu'hbourino- roofs. 



