124 SOCIAL LIFE IN THE INSECT WORLD 



front rank of the insect world ! The books celebrate its 

 virtues and never tire of its praises ; the naturalists hold it 

 in high esteem and add to its reputation daily ; so true is 

 it of animals, as of man, that of the various means of 

 living in history the most certain is to do harm to others 



Every one knows the Bousier (dung-beetle) and the 

 Necrophorus, those lively murderers ; the gnat, the 

 drinker of blood ; the wasp, the irascible bully with 

 the poisoned dagger ; and the ant, the maleficent creature 

 which in the villages of the South of France saps and 

 imperils the rafters and ceilings of a dwelling with the 

 same energy it brings to the eating of a fig. I need say 

 no more ; human history is full of similar examples of the 

 useful misunderstood and undervalued and the calami- 

 tous glorified. 



What with the ants and other exterminating forces, the 

 massacre was so great that the colonies of Crickets in my 

 orchard, so numerous at the outset, were so far decimated 

 that I could not continue my observations, but had to 

 resort to the outside world for further information. 



In August, among the detritus of decaying leaves, in 

 little oases whose turf is not burned by the sun, I find 

 the young Cricket has already grown to a considerable 

 size ; he is all black, like the adult, without a vestige of 

 the white cincture of the early days. He has no domicile 

 The shelter of a dead leaf, the cover afforded by a fiat 

 stone is sufficient ; he is a nomad, and careless where he 

 takes his repose. 



Not until the end of October, when the first frosts 

 are at hand, does the work of burrowing commence. 

 The operation is very simple, as far as I can tell from 

 what I have learned from the insect in captivity. The 



