338 OBSERVATIONS ON 



escaping away nimbly at the approach of a candle. Their antennae 

 are remarkably long, slender, and flexile. 



October, 1 790. After the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen- 

 hearth swarms with young crickets, and young blattce molendinarice 

 of all sizes, from the most minute growth to their full proportions. 

 They seem to live in a friendly manner together, and not to prey 

 the one on the other. 



August, 1792. After the destruction of many thousands of 

 blattce molendinarice, we find that at intervals a fresh detachment 

 of old ones arrives, and particularly during this hot season : for 

 the windows being left open in the evenings, the males come 

 flying in at the casements from the neighbouring houses, which 

 swarm with them. How the females, that seem to have no 

 perfect wings that they can use, can contrive to get from house 

 to house, does not so readily appear. These, like many insects, 

 when they find their present abodes over-stocked, have powers of 

 migrating to fresh quarters. Since the blattce have been so much 

 kept under, the crickets have greatly increased in number. 1 



GRYLLUS DOMESTICUS. HOUSE CRICKET. 



November. After the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen- 

 hearth swarms with minute crickets not so large as fleas, which 

 must have been lately hatched. So that these domestic insects, 

 cherished by the influence of a constant large fire, regard not the 

 season of the year, but produce their young at a time when their 

 congeners are either dead, or laid up for the winter, to pass away 

 the uncomfortable months in the profoundest slumbers, and a state 

 of torpidity. 



When house-crickets are out, and running about in a room in 

 the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three shrill 

 notes, as it were for a signal to their fellows, that they may escape 

 to their crannies and lurking holes, to avoid danger. 



1 [It is to be noticed that the cockroach was an unfamiliar insect in English 

 villages a little more than a hundred years ago. White's mistaken belief that 

 Blatta (Periplaneta) orientalis is native to America was derived from Linnaeus 

 (" Habitat in America : hospitatur in Oriente." Syst. Nat.).'] 



