REMEDY AGAINST FIELD-CRICKETS. 265 
but the stream being wide and swift, the crickets 
had not crossed it, so our tired animals had a 
good supper, and we a comfortable camp. IJrode 
off to some farm-enclosures I saw, in search of 
milk and eggs; and, to my great surprise, I no- 
_ ticed every field had a little tin-fence inside the 
snake or rail fence, about six or eight inches 
wide, nailed along on a piece of lumber, placed 
edgeways in the ground, so that a good wide 
ledge of tin projected towards the prairie. 
‘What,’ I said to the first farmer I met, ‘induces 
you to put this tin affair round your field?’ 
‘Why, stranger, I guess you ain’t a-travelled 
this way much, or you'd be pretty tall sure that 
them darned blackshirts out on the prairie would 
eat a hoss and chase the rider. But for that bit of 
a tin-fixin’ thar, they’d mighty soon-make tracks 
for my field, and just leave her clean as an 
axe-blade. These critters come about once in 
four years, and a mighty tall time they have 
when they do come!’ 
It was a most effectual and capital contrivance 
to keep them out, for if they came underneath 
the tin they jumped up against it, and it was 
too wide to leap over. These field-crickets 
(Acheta nigra) are black, and very much larger 
than the ordinary house-cricket. They eat 
