46 ORTHOPTERA. 



warm sunny weather, however, crickets prefer the open 

 air, and may be found within the crevices of garden 

 walls and similar places. Crickets are said to have the 

 good character of destroying their cursorial cousins, the 

 cockroaches. I dp not know how far this is correct. In 

 places where they abound to such an extent as to be a 

 perfect nuisance, it may be useful to know that they 

 may be destroyed by placing phials half filled with beer 

 or other liquid in their haunts. Into these they crowd 

 till they are full. The cricket's chirp is by some looked 

 upon as a good omen, foretelling cheerfulness and plenty. 

 This notion is pretty general in England. Cowper, ad- 

 dressing the cricket " chirping on his kitchen hearth," 

 alludes to this superstition: — 



" Wheresoe'er be thine abode, 

 Always harbinger of good.'' 



In Charles Dickens' little tale this same notion is em- 

 bodied : " It's sure. to bring us good fortune, John ! It 

 always has been so. To have a cricket on the hearth is 

 the luckiest thing in the world." Nevertheless, the 

 cricket's chirp is sometimes supposed to forebode disaster 

 and death. When Blonzelind expired, Gay says — 



" And shrilling crickets in the chimney cry'd." 



Similarly, in the " Oedipus " of Dryden and Lee — 



" Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death !" 



Gilbert White, of Selborne, says — " Crickets are the 

 house-wife's barometer, foretelling her when it will rain, 

 and are prognostics sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good 

 luck ; of the death of a near relative, or the approach of 



