112 NORTH AMERICAN INSECTS. 
and the pleasing reminiscences of love and of home which 
its chirping arouses, recently so touchingly portrayed in 
that admirable little tale of Charles Dickens, entitled ‘The 
Cricket on the Hearth,” has thrown a charm around its 
life and history perhaps never before so graphically real- 
ized. In fact, Dickens has embodied the superstitious ven- 
eration of this little insect, common among the country 
people of many nations, when he makes his heroine say, 
‘‘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.” And Cowper did the same, years 
before, when he sung: 
“Little inmate, full of mirth, 
Chirping on my kitchen hearth, 
Wheresoe’er be thine abode, 
Always harbinger of good, 
Pay me for thy warm retreat 
With a song more soft and sweet.” 
There are several species of Crickets, some of which are 
found in every part of the world, but all resembling each 
other in their distinguishing characteristics. They are of 
different sizes and colors, according to their different spe- 
cies, but all have parchment-like wing-covers, and produce 
the sound peculiar to them by rubbing the sharp margins 
of their wing-covers together. Of all insects they are per- 
haps the most indefatigable musicians, some of them thus 
fiddling with their wings from daybreak until sundown, 
and others from evening until the rising of the sun. 
There are some Crickets which dwell only upon trees and 
bushes, and never come to the ground; these are, on this 
account, called Tree-crickets. Others live only on the 
ground, and are known by the name of Field-crickets. 
Others still live in the walls of houses, and are called 
House-crickets. 
The TREE-cRIcKET, also called CLimpinG-cRICKET (A che- 
