OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND VERMES 357 



and escaping away nimbly at the approach of a candle. Their 

 antennae are remarkably long, slender, and flexile. 



October 1790. After the servants are gone to bed, the 

 kitchen hearth swarms with young crickets, and young blatta 

 molendinaria of all sizes, from the most minute growth to 

 their full proportions. They seem to live in a friendly man- 

 ner together, and not to prey the one on the other. 



August 1792. After the destruction of many thousands of 

 blattce molendinarice, we find that at intervals a fresh detach- 

 ment of old ones arrives, and particularly during this hot 

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

 males come flying in at the casements from the neighboring 

 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 present 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. 



GRYLLUS DOMESTICUS ; 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, cherished 

 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 1 2th, 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 



