THE COMMON COCKROACH 117 



named, that domicile themselves with man (as we have 

 already seen), lurking in cellars and outhouses, but 

 these are totally different insects from Periplaneta 

 orientalis (Fig. 33), the common cockroach, with which 

 we are now concerned, and they never appear in 

 enormous swarms in our kitchens, as the cockroach 

 frequently does. 



English soil did not produce this much-maligned 

 insect ; it is an immigrant from foreign parts. It is, 

 in fact, not an inhabitant of temperate climes at all, 

 but came originally from the tropical parts of Asia. 

 While importing cargoes of the productions of other 

 countries, we often unwittingly and unintentionally 

 add considerably to our own insular fauna. Probably 

 no shipload of animal or vegetable produce from distant 

 lands starts for our ports without the accompaniment 

 of an assemblage of living creatures, chiefly insects, 

 from the same parts of the globe. Such of these as 

 survive the voyage stand a chance, after unshiprnent, 

 of becoming naturalised, if only they can speedily find 

 suitable food and a locality which yields a congenial 

 temperature. Amongst such established importations, 

 of which we may now count some dozens of examples, 

 the common cockroach stands pre-eminent as regards 

 both size and numbers, and is probably as cordially 

 hated as any of them except the bed-bug. When the 

 first Asiatic cockroach set foot in Britain, it is im- 

 possible to say with certainty, but it was probably 

 not more than about four centuries ago. By the end of 

 the sixteenth century, they had been introduced into the 

 two chief maritime countries of Europe England and 

 Holland ; but we do not get any specific notice of them 

 in zoological literature till near the middle of the 

 seventeenth century, when we read of them as found 



