158 Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 



FIG. 223. The Euro- 



To sing, the males lift their wing-covers at an angle of about 45 over the 

 back, and strongly rub together the bases. Their chirping is made either 

 in the daytime or night, and is a love call or song for their mates. We have 

 several common crickets in dwellings, one, Gryllus domesticus (Fig. 223), 

 being the European house-cricket, the "cricket on the 

 hearth," which is becoming at home here, being espe- 

 cially met With in Canada. It is pale brown and less 

 than an inch long. Gryllus luctuosus and G. assimilis 

 are two native crickets which are common in houses; 

 they are black with brownish-black wing-covers, larger 

 and mpre robust than domesticus, and with the folded 

 wings projecting backward beyond the wing-covers like 

 pointed tails. These house-crickets are most active 

 at night, and seem to have a taste for almost any 

 food-product in the house. They will eat each other 

 when other food is scarce. If they become so nu- 

 merous in the house that they need to be got rid of, 

 advantage may be taken of their liking for sweet 

 liquids by exposing smooth-walled vessels half filled 

 w ^ sucn uc l u ids, into which the crickets will fall and 

 pean house - cricket, drown in their attempts to get at the food. The most 



Gryllus domesticus, a b un dant and wide-spread outdoors cricket is Gryllus 

 female. (After Lug- 

 ger; natural size in- abbreviatus (Fig. 224), the short-winged field-cricket, 

 dicated by line.) The w i n g s are sometimes wanting, but more often pres- 

 ent and shorter than the wing-covers, which in the females are themselves 

 unusually short, reaching but half-way to the end of the abdomen. The 

 slender ovipositor is as long as the 

 body, and the hind femora are very 

 thick and have a red spot at the 

 base on either side. The life-history 

 of this common insect is not yet fully 

 known, some writers stating that the 

 eggs laid in autumn do not hatch until 

 the following spring, the insect thus 

 passing the winter in the egg Stage, FIG 224. The short-winged cricket, Gryllus 

 while others have taken half-grown abbreviatus. (Natural size.) 



young from beneath logs in late autumn and in midwinter. The field- 

 cricket is "nocturnal, omnivorous, and a cannibal. Avoiding the light 

 of day," says Blatchley, "he ventures forth as soon as darkness has fallen, 

 in search of food, and all appears to be fish which comes to his net. Of 

 fruit, vegetables, grass, and carrion he seems equally fond, and does not 



