INSECT SPRKCH. I3I 



them in cages, as are singing birds. Gilbert White found 

 that if supplied with moistened green leaves they will sing as 

 merrily and loudly in a paper cage as in the fields. 



Swammerdam entertained a different notion of their music. 

 " I remember," he says, " that I once saw a whole field full 

 of these singing crickets, each of which had dug itself a hole 

 in the earth two fingers deep, and then, sitting at the entrance 

 thereof, they made a very disagreeable noise with the creak- 

 ing and tremulous motion of their wings. When they heard 

 any noise they immediately retired with fright into their little 

 caverns." 



The house cricket or hearth cricket, of Europe, is not 

 common on the western continent except in Canada, but two 

 or three species of field crickets are occasionally found in 

 houses in the United States. The common black cricket, 

 found in grassy pasture lands or fields, lives in burrows under 

 the ground, issues sometimes during the day, but more usu- 

 ally at night to feed, and takes blades of grass back into its 

 burrow. The eggs are laid in the autumn, generally in the 

 ground, and are hatched the following summer. The mole 

 crickets live always under the ground and feed upon the 

 tender roots of forage plants, while the tree crickets are, as 

 their name suggests, arboreal in their habits. 



The name cricket is derived from the imitative French 

 popular name, "cricri," and similar descriptive names are 

 applied to it in many foreign tongues. 



Six weeks from katydid to frost. Such is the idea com- 

 monly held by many when the call of this insect first breaks 

 the stillness of a July evening. The time worn assertion and 

 denial of " Katy did" and " Katy didn't" seem in these 

 parts to have changed to a simple, non-committal " Katy." 

 In other words, their dialogue generally consists of two syl- 

 lables rather than three. " These two notes," says Scudder, 

 •' are of equal (and extraordinary) emphasis, the latter about 

 one-quarter longer than the former; or, if three notes are 

 given, the first and second are alike, and a little shorter than 



