496 NOISES OF INSECTS. 



soon as it grows dusk, its shrill note increases till it becomes quite an 

 annoyance, and interrupts conversation. When the male sings, he elevates 

 the elytra so as to form an acute angle with the body, and then rubs them 

 against each other by a horizontal and very brisk motion. 1 The learned 

 Scaliger is said to have been particularly delighted with the chirping of 

 these animals, and was accustomed to keep them in a box for his amuse- 

 ment. We are told that they have been sold in Africa at a high price, 

 and employed to procure sleep. 3 If they could be used to supply the 

 place of laudanum, and lull the restlessness of busy thought in this country, 

 the exchange would be beneficial. Like many other noisy persons, crickets 

 like to hear nobody louder than themselves. Ledelius relates that a 

 woman, who had tried in vain every method she could think of to banish 

 them from her house, at last got rid of them by the noise made by drums 

 and trumpets, which she had procured to entertain her guests at a wedding. 

 They instantly forsook the house, and she heard of them no more. 3 



The field-cricket (Gryllus campestris) makes a shrilling noise still more 

 sonorous than that of the house-cricket which may be heard at a great 

 distance. Mouffet tells us, that their sound may be imitated by rubbing 

 their elytra, after they are taken off, against each other. 4 " Sounds," says 

 Mr. White, " do not always give us pleasure according to their sweetness 

 and melody ; nor do harsh sounds always displease. Thus the shrilling 

 of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights 

 some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of every 

 thing that is rural, verdurous, and joyous." One of these crickets when 

 confined in a paper cage and set in the sun, and supplied with plants 

 moistened with water for if they are not wetted it will die will feed, 

 and thrive, and become so merry and loud, as to be irksome in the same 

 room where a person is sitting. 5 



Having never seen a female of that extraordinary animal the mole- 

 cricket (Gryllotalpa vulgaris\ I cannot say what difference obtains in 

 the reticulation of the elytra of the two sexes. The male varies in this 

 respect from the other male crickets, for they have no circular area, nor 

 do the nervures run so irregularly; the areolets, however, towards 

 their base are large, with very tense membrane. The base itself also is 

 scarcely at all elevated. Circumstances these, which demonstrate the 

 propriety of considering them distinct from the other crickets. This crea- 

 ture is not, however, mute. Where they abound they may be heard 

 about the middle of April singing their love-ditty in a low, dull, jarring, 

 uninterrupted note, not unlike that of the goat-sucker (Cnprimulgus Euro- 

 P(BUS\ but more inward. 6 I remember once tracing one by its shrilling to 

 the very hole, under a stone in the bank of my canal, in which it was con- 

 cealed. We learn from Mr. Newport, who, in his very valuable treatise on 



1 De Geer, iii. 517. See also White, Nat. Hist. ii. 76. ; and Ray, Hist, 

 Ins. 63. 



2 Mouffet, 136. 



3 Goldsmith's Animat. Nat. vi. 28. 4 7ns. Theatr. 134. 



5 Nat. Hist. ii. 73. Yet it would appear that when wholly removed from the 

 scent of their mother-earth they are silent, for it is stated by Southey that on the 

 ship of Cabeza de Vaca approaching the coast of Brazil, the proximity of land was 

 inferred, and as the result proved, truly, by a ground-cricket which a soldier had 

 brought from Cadiz then beginning again to sing. {Hist, of Brazil.) 



Nat. Hist. ii. 81. 



