242 THE WOODLANDS. 



nocturnal in their habits. The female earwig broods 

 over her eggs after the manner of a hen. De Geer, 

 having found an earwig so occupied, placed her in a 

 box with some earth, scattering her eggs in all di- 

 rections ; these she soon collected in a heap, and 

 then sat upon them as before. When the young are 

 hatched, they creep, like a brood of chickens, under 

 the belly of the mother, who suffers them to push 

 between her feet, and will often, as De Geer found, 

 sit over them in this posture for hours. 



The Cockroach (often called the Black Beetle) 

 and. the Cricket are both members of this same 

 order; and so also are the Mole Cricket, Field Cricket, 

 Grasshopper, and Locust. Fortunately, the latter 

 causes us very little inconvenience in our island 

 home, but in the Orient it is very destructive. 

 Stick insects and leaf insects, so called from their 

 resemblance to sticks and leaves, and the Praying 

 Mantis, all belong to this order. 



It is doubtful, even if locusts were common with 

 us, if we should revenge ourselves upon them exactly 

 in the same way as Jackson relates of them in 

 Barbary, where he says, that dishes of locusts were 

 generally served up at the principal tables, and es- 

 teemed a great delicacy. "They are," he says, 

 " preferred by the Moors to pigeons, and a person 

 may eat a plateful of two or three hundred without 

 feeling any ill-effects." To what extent cockroaches 

 are eaten by the Turkish ladies we cannot affirm, 

 but they are said to promote obesity, one attribute of 

 ' beauty. 



That crickets and grasshoppers when in con- 



