Ii 4 THOSE OTHER ANIMALS. 



where did he abide before man began to build houses ? 

 In this country, at any rate, he always takes up his abode 

 in the habitation man provides for him: No one ever 

 came across him in the fields or woods. It is in the 

 house he lives and multiplies. He fears man and shuns 

 his society, and yet appears to have a mysterious attraction 

 to his abodes ; the cricket only among insects, and the 

 mouse and the rat among quadrupeds, share with the 

 cockroach his partiality for human dwellings. But the 

 cricket is but a domesticated grasshopper, the mouse has 

 a country cousin, and the rat will take up his abode in 

 many other localities. The cockroach alone is never found 

 elsewhere, and has no relations in any way closely connected 

 with him who are dwellers in the open air. 



Next to man's houses, the blatta> as he is scientifically 

 called, loves his ships ; but the variety that is found in vessels, 

 especially in those trading with the East, is a larger, uglier, 

 and in every way more repulsive creature than his English 

 cousin. Once on board and there is scarce a ship afloat 

 into which he has not smuggled himself he is there to stay, 

 and short of sinking the vessel, or of fastening down the 

 hatches and suffocating him with the fumes of sulphur, there 

 is no way of getting rid of him. He multiplies with extra- 

 ordinary rapidity, and his odour, when he is present in 

 multitude, is so strong that in the hold many ships 

 trading in hot countries it is almost overpowering. The 

 flatness of his body enables him to crawl through every 

 chink and crevice, and all efforts to keep him out of the 

 cabins are unavailing. The ship variety has none of that 

 fear of man that sends the kitchen cockroaches scuttling 

 in every direction at the approach of a maid with a 



