THE COMMON COCKROACH 145 



Such is the insect which foreign commerce has intro- 

 duced to our island, and which, by reason of the 

 persistence with which it clings to the fortunes of the 

 human race, has become truly cosmopolitan, and seems 

 to be almost a necessary adjunct of modern civilisation. 

 Nowhere a welcome guest, it yet quietly pushes on its 

 conquests, and even the determined hostility of the tidy 

 housewife does not avail to check its progress. Its 

 nocturnal habits and love of concealment make it a 

 very difficult insect to eradicate when once it has 

 established itself in a house, and it is to be feared 

 that no certain remedy for this nuisance has yet been 

 discovered. Spite of "beetle-traps" and "vermin- 

 powders," it maintains its ground; neither rats, cats, 

 nor hedgehogs (all numbered amongst its foes, and 

 the last especially a greedy devourer of it) are able 

 materially to lessen its numbers. By reason of some 

 subtle superiority, perhaps impossible for our gross 

 senses to perceive, it continues to be victorious over 

 all its enemies, and in the face of all opposition and 

 efforts to exterminate it, still flourishes and continually 

 spreads. It is, indeed, gradually dislodging an old and 

 familiar inhabitant of kitchens, the house-cricket, an 

 insect of very similar habits to itself, and no very 

 distant relation of its own. 



P. orientalis is not the only species of cockroach which 

 attaches itself to man. A considerably larger species, 

 P. Americana, which is winged in both sexes, has spread 

 a good deal from its native haunts in tropical America, 

 and has effected a lodgment in some places in this 

 country. But for some reason or other, it does not 

 seem likely to displace orientalis, a curious fact, inas- 

 much as it is a stronger insect, and, being gifted with 

 wings in both sexes, might be supposed to have had 



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