338 OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND VERMES. 



hot season ; for, the windows being left open in the evenings, 

 the males come flying in at the casements from the neigh- 

 bouring houses, which swarm with them. How the females, 

 that seem to have no perfect wings that they can use, can 

 contrive to get from house to house, does not so readily 

 appear. These, like many insects, when they find their pre- 

 sent abodes overstocked, have powers of migrating to fresh 

 quarters. Since the blattce have been so much kept under, 

 the crickets have greatly increased in number. WHITE. 



GrRYLLus DOMESTICTTS (HOUSE CRICKET). November. 

 After the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen hearth swarms 

 with minute crickets, not so large as fleas, which must have 

 been lately hatched. So that these domestic insects, che- 

 rished by the influence of a constant large fire, regard not 

 the season of the year, but produce their young at a time 

 when their congeners are either dead or laid up for the 

 winter, to pass away the uncomfortable months in the 

 profoundest slumbers, and a state of torpidity. 



"When house-crickets are out and running about in a room 

 in the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three 

 shrill notes, as it were for a signal to their fellows, that they 

 may escape to their crannies and lurking holes, to avoid 

 danger. WHITE. 



CIMEX LINEARIS.* August 12, 1775. Cimices lineares 

 are now in high copulation on ponds and pools. The females, 

 who vastly exceed the males in bulk, dart and shoot along on 

 the surface of the water with the males on their backs. When 

 a female chooses to be disengaged, she rears, and jumps, and 

 plunges like an unruly colt ; the lover, thus dismounted, soon 

 finds a new mate. The females, as fast as their curiosities 

 are satisfied, retire to another part of the lake, perhaps to 

 deposit their foetus in quiet ; hence the sexes are found 



* The egg of the long \vater-bug, Mr. Bennett informs us, has been suffi- 

 ciently known for many years. It is armed at one end with two bristles, and 

 is inserted into the stem of an aquatic plant, generally of a club-rush, in which 

 it is so deeply immersed by the aid of the lengthened ovipositor of the insect, as 

 to be entirely hidden from view ; the bristles alone project from the place of 

 concealment. The object of this curious arrangement is among the most 

 beautiful and beneficent of the provisions of Nature. 



