FIELD WORK ON ORTHOPTERA. 8 1 



After nightfall, in a barn feed-room, or in some bakery, 

 or press-room of a daily paper, or sometimes in the most 

 cleanly kitchen, especially if it is in an old house, if you 

 step carefully and keep still for some time after entering, 

 then suddenly strike a light, you will be almost sure to 

 find some roaches, big or little. Around a wood pile, 

 where there is plenty of chips, you may find our native 

 roach, shining black, and darting slippery- wise among 

 the chips as you try to get it. Around the drain-pipe of 

 the wash-room look for the light-brown, thin-bodied 

 croton bug. 



On your trip to the open meadows look for field 

 crickets and meadow green grasshoppers with long 

 slender antennae which they wave solemnly up and down 

 as they look at you, that is, if you keep still. 



If you wish to find walking sticks you will have to 

 go to trees or shrubbery, and look on the bare twigs for 

 this new sort of twig. You will find that the one addi- 

 tional requisite for insects that are colored like the things 

 they live on, is to remain motionless when an enemy is 

 around. So you will have to be patient long enough to 

 quiet their suspicions, before you will be rewarded by 

 seeing them go about their business naturally and un- 

 afraid. And then will be your chance to learn about 

 them. 



Crickets, contrary to the usual belief, are not uni- 

 formly eaters of clothing, and therefore to be killed on 

 sight. Field crickets, out-of-door crickets of all kinds, 

 would not know cloth if they saw it, and certainly would 

 not know it for food. The domestic cricket is somewhat 

 a vegetable feeder, but is more likely to be a scavenger; 

 so do not relegate to the gasoline bottle every cricket you 

 find. 



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