THE COMMON COCKROACH 119 



essential to their well-being, as might be expected from 

 importations from the tropics ; they cannot stand cold, 

 and much less than the frosts and snows of winter is 

 sufficient to kill them. Therefore they have the good 

 sense to take up their quarters in that part of the 

 house where artificial warmth is most constantly kept 

 up. Then, again, the kitchen regions are the land of 

 plenty, and contain things edible to a greater extent 

 than the rest of the house. Not that they are at all 

 fastidious as regards diet; the most unpromising materials 

 yield them sustenance, and they will absolutely thrive 

 on what might have been supposed to be totally innutri- 

 tious. They are truly omnivorous : articles of human 

 food, both animal and vegetable, are much to their 

 taste, but they do not stop at these ; woollen clothes, 

 newspapers, blacking, ink, leather, and even emery 

 paper will do equally well, and they will even devour 

 their own cast skins, and enjoy a cannibal feast on 

 the corpses of their relations. Professor Moseley 

 records how, during the circumnavigating voyage of 

 H.M.S. Challenger, a number of cockroaches, stowaways 

 on the voyage, established themselves in his cabin, 

 and devoured parts of his boots, "nibbling off all the 

 margins of leather projecting beyond the seams on the 

 upper leathers." 



The same naturalist gives an amusing account of the 

 attempts he made to rid himself of one particularly 

 unpleasant visitor (apparently a different species from 

 P. orientdlis, though of similar habits), which seems to 

 have manifested a considerable degree of intelligence. 

 He says, " One huge winged cockroach baffled me in 

 my attempts to get rid of him for a long time. I could 

 not discover his retreat. At night he came out and 

 rested on my book-shelf at the foot of my bed, swaying 



