276 Miscellaneous. 



possession of a large old frame house on a farm which was a home- 

 stead for the largest, blackest, and most musical of the cricket kind. 

 Early in the fall I began to be annoyed by finding one or more 

 hair-snakes in the water-pail. Though I knew that there posi- 

 tively was nothing of the kind in the pail when it came in, yet a 

 few minutes or an hour generally provided us with a more or less 

 lively specimen. I had a horror of them, because of the dread lest 

 the children should imbibe one with their frequent nips of the 

 water ; so I sat down one warm afternoon to watch the pail, to try 

 to learn how the snakes came. In about ten minutes I saw a par- 

 ticularly plethoric cricket mount upon the edge of the pail, and, after 

 some uneasy movements, bring the tip of the abdomen just beneath 

 the water, and, with a few violent throes, expel a black mass, which 

 fell slowly through the water and before it reached the bottom 

 resolved itself into one of the worms. The cricket seemed ex- 

 hausted by the horrid birth, and did not find strength to draw 

 itself up on the edge of the pail for about eight minutes, and when 

 it finally did so it tumbled to the floor and crawled off in a very 

 rheumatic manner. After this discovery we used to amuse leisure 

 hours by watching like operations until frost killed the crickets. 

 I sometimes would crush large crickets, generally with the result 

 that a tightly-coiled snake would be thrust out of a rupture just 

 above the tip of the abdomen ; but, whether the snake was not 

 sufficiently developed, or because of its needing water rather than 

 air to vitalize it, none of the snakes so produced showed any signs of 

 life." 



The water-snake alluded to is, of course, a species of our common 

 Gordius, the same probably as that described, a number of years ago, 

 by our distinguished President, Prof. Jos. Leidy. The fact that this 

 animal is parasitic within the grasshopper the speaker had himself 

 observed ; it has been said also to be parasitic within spiders, and 

 doubtless has for its host many of the Oi'thopterous genera. The 

 point of greatest interest in the letter, Dr. McCook thought, is the 

 fact that the crickets had evidently learned that the parasite in- 

 festing them required the water in order to make its egress, and 

 had deliberately sought the suitable place and assumed the proper 

 position (by inserting the abdomen beneath the surface of the 

 water) necessary to insure that egress. It is a curious psychological 

 question, How"did the cricket obtain this knowledge? And the 

 knowledge having been obtained, the cricket's subsequent behaviour 

 presents an interesting fact in the study of insect intelligence. — 

 Proc. Acad. Nat. Sd. Philad., Nov. 25, 1884, p. 293. 



