Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 159 





hesitate to prey upon a weaker brother when opportunity offers. I have 



often surprised them feasting on the bodies of their com- 

 panions; and of about forty imprisoned together in a 



box, at the end of a week but six were living. The 



heads, wings, and legs of their dead companions were all 



that remained to show that the weaker had succumbed 



to the stronger that the fittest, and in this case the 



fattest, had survived in the deadly struggle for existence." 

 These crickets live in cracks in the soil, or under 



stones or logs, or sometimes make burrows. 



The genus Nemobius contains a number of little 



crickets known as "striped ground-crickets," which are 



less than half an inch long, are dusky brownish with hairy 



head and thorax, and have faint blackish longitudinal 



stripes on the head. "Unlike their larger cousins, the 



field-crickets, they do not wait for darkness before seek- 

 ing their food, but wherever the grass has been cropped 



short, whether on shaded hillside in the full glare of 



the noonday sun along the beaten roadway, mature speci- 

 mens may be seen by hundreds during the days of early 



autumn." They are powerful jumpers and readily evade 



attempts to capture them. They feed on living vegetation 



and on all kinds of decaying animal matter, and because of 

 their abundance and voracious appetite must do much 

 damage at times. Scudder gives the following account of 

 the singing of the wingless striped cricket, Nemobius mttatus 

 (Fig. 225), our commonest species: "The chirping of the 

 striped cricket is very similar to that of the black field-cricket, 

 and may be expressed by r-r-r-u, pronounced as though it 

 were a French word. The note is trilled forcibly, and lasts 



/ * a variable length of time. One of these insects was once 



FIG. 226. The observed while singing to its mate. At first the song was 



snowy tree- j^j and frequently broken; afterwards it grew impetuous, 



cricket, (Ecan- . r 



thus niveus, forcible, and more prolonged; then it decreased in volume 



(Natural size.) an( j ex t en t until it became quite soft and feeble. At this 

 point the male began to approach 

 the female, uttering a series of 

 twittering chirps; the female ran 

 away, and the male, after a short 



chase, returned to his old haunt, 



. , FIG. 227. (Ecanthus jascwtus, female. (After 



singing with the same vigor, but Lugger; natural size indicated by line.) 



.The small 

 ground- 

 cricket, Nemobius 

 jasciatus; form mt- 

 tatus, female. (After 

 Lugger; about 

 twice natural size.) 



