244 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
eat the scummings of pots, and yeast, salt, and crumbs of bread, 
and any kitchen offal or sweepings. In the summer we have 
observed them to fly when it became dusk out of the windows, and 
over the neighbouring roofs. This feat of activity accounts for 
the sudden manner in which they often leave their haunts, as it 
does for the method by which they come to houses where they 
were not known before. It is remarkable that many sorts of 
insects seem never to use their wings but when they have a mind 
to shift their quarters and settle new colonies. When in the air 
they move “‘ volatu undoso,”’ in waves or curves, like wood-peckers, 
opening and shutting their wings at every stroke, and so are always 
rising or sinking. 
When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the 
house where I am now writing, they become noisome pests, flying 
into the candles, and dashing into people’s faces; but may be 
blasted and destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices 
and crannies. In families at such times they are like Pharaoh’s 
plague of frogs,—“in their bedchambers, and upon their beds, and 
jn their ovens, and in their kneading treughs.”* Their shrilling 
noise is occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch 
hearth crickets, and, playing with them as. they do with mice, 
devour them. Crickets may be destroyed, like wasps, by phials 
filled with beer, or any liquid, and set in their haunts ; for being 
always eager to drink, they will crowd in till the bottles are full. 
* Exod. viii. 3. 
