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NATURAL HISTORY. 



soon recover: frost kills them, but does not affect their eggs; powdered 

 borax and cucumber peel are delusions. All that one can do is to destroy 

 as many as possible, and stand those that remain. The fight, too, must be 

 kept up continually. Give the roaches' a respite, and they soon attain 

 their former numbers. They lay their eggs in little cases something like 

 the pod pf a pea, and from these hatch out the little white roaches, which 

 for a while are objects of anxious solicitude on the part of the mother. 



Cockroaches are omnivorous. They eat everything which contains the 

 least nourishment; and this renders them to a certain extent of value, for 

 they keep all the cracks and crevices clean and free from decaying matter. 

 Winn they appear in an apartment, one can extract a little consolation from 

 the fact that they are fond of bed-bugs, and that these other pests will not 



appear while the roaches abound ; but this hardly begins to compensate for 

 the damage they do. They eat the bindings of cloth-covered books, the 

 plants in greenhouses ; but above all they delight in bread and wheat flour. 



The species to the left of our cut is the most widely distributed of any 

 of the nine hundred different kinds of cockroaches ; and in New York and 

 New England it has the common name ' Croton bug,' doubtless in allusion 

 to the rapidity with which it multiplied and spread in New York City after 

 the introduction of Croton water. It is small in comparison with some of 

 the forms, especially those which abound on ships and in the tropics. 

 Fortunately all of these forms have not taken to invading our homes. The 

 five that have done so are amply sufficient. It is noticeable that where one 

 species of cockroach has invaded a house, no other species occurs. This is 

 said to be due to the fact that one species is very apt to feed on the young 

 and the eggs of the other. 



The praying mantes stand higher than the cockroaches. They have 



