INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 243 



meat, clothes and books, even attacks persons in their 

 sleep, and the extremities of the dead and dying a . 



The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still more 

 annoying insect than the common cock-roach, adding 

 an incessant noise to its ravages ; since, although, for a 

 short time, it may not be unpleasant to hear 



" the cricket chirrup in the hearth," 



so constant a din every evening must very much inter- 

 rupt comfort and conversation. These garrulous animals, 

 which live in a kind of artificial torrid zone, are very 

 thirsty souls, and are frequently found drowned in pans 

 of water, milk, broth, and the like. Whatever is moist, 

 even stockings or linen hung out to dry, is to them a 

 bonne louche ; they will eat the scummings of pots, yeast, 

 crumbs of bread, and even salt, or any thing within 

 their reach. Sometimes they are so abundant in houses 

 as to become absolute pests, flying into the candles and 

 into people's faces. 



At Cuddapa, in the ceded districts to the northward 

 of Mysore, Captain Green was much annoyed by a 

 jumping insect, which from his description I should take 

 for the larva of a species of cricket. They were of a dun 

 colour, and from half to three-fourths of an inch in 

 length. They abounded at night, and were very inju- 

 rious to papers and books, which they both discoloured 

 and devoured ; leather also was eaten by them. Such 

 was their boldness and avidity, that they attacked the 

 exposed parts of the body when you were asleep, nib- 

 bling the ends of the fingers, particularly the skin under 

 the nails, which was only discoverable by a slight sore- 



* Drury's Insects, iii. Preface. 

 R2 



