CHAPTEE IX. 



THE COMMON COCKROACH. 



UNDER this name some may perhaps hardly recognise 

 the insect so well known as a kitchen nuisance, and 



popularly called a 

 " black beetle." A 

 more inappropriate 

 name than black beetle 

 could hardly be con- 

 ceived. The epithet 

 " black " is apparently 

 applied in a loose sort 

 of way to indicate 

 merely a dark colour, 

 for, when closely exa- 

 mined, the creature 

 is seen to be really 

 reddish-brown, . of a 

 deeper or brighter 

 tinge according to age 



FIG. 33. The Common Cockroach (Peripla- and S6X, only approach- 



neta orientalis), Female. . . 



ing black in the older 



females, and then merely on the back. Again, in many 

 important structural characteristics, as well as in the 

 nature of the changes it undergoes in the course of its 

 life, it is widely removed from the true beetles. Not 

 but that there are black beetles (Slaps, &c.) rightly 



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