20 ANIMALS OF NO IMPORTANCE. 



tragedies that frequently occur in the seemingly peaceful 

 bungalow ! 



The cricket is another of my unbidden guests. He is a 

 cousin of the grasshoppers, and, like his relatives, a mar- 

 vellous jumper, hence it is not easy to capture him ; you 

 think you have him in a corner, when, like De Wet, he 

 escapes you. The cricket is not a favourite of mine, for 

 his continued shrill stridulation is to me a most unpleasant 

 sound. The males only do the chirruping ; it is their love 

 song. Bates, writing of the European field cricket, states : 

 "The male has been observed to place himself in the even- 

 ing at the entrance of his burrow, and stridulate until 

 a female approaches, when the louder notes are succeeded 

 by a more subdued tone, whilst the successful musician 

 caresses with his antennas the mate he has won." Al- 

 though the chief object of stridulation is to attract the 

 female, it is not the only one. White in his Natural His- 

 tory of Selborne declares that the house cricket, when 

 surprised at night, uses its voice to warn its fellows. Dr. 

 Scudder was able to excite a cricket to answer-him by rub- 

 bing a. file with a quill. 



When a cricket is "calling" his legs never move, his 

 wings, however, vibrate in a horizontal plane. So fast is 

 the motion 24,000 vibrations a second that the eye can 

 scarcely follow it. If the wing-cover of a cricket be exa- 

 mined under the microscope there will be seen projecting 

 from the under surface a ridge divided up into some 230 

 teeth. This toothed-ridge is rapidly scraped across a 

 smooth hard projection on the lower wing, and thus the 

 irritating sound of the cricket produced. 



Most naturalists will admit that, with the exception of 

 man, the polymorphic insects ants, termites, bees, and 

 wasps are the most wonderful animals in creation. Of 

 these four families no fewer than three are represented in 

 the fauna of almost every bungalow. These creatures, 

 long before man came into existence, discovered two great 

 economic truths, that the advantages of the division of 



