COCKROACHES, ETC. 115 



naturalists since the days of Linnaeus. Curiously 

 enough it has not been met with in a truly wild state 

 until quite recently ; the first specimens that were 

 found were caught in houses, and though it has 

 always been assumed that it was imported into 

 Europe from the East, I am not aware that it has 

 ever been found in Asia except as an unwelcome 

 guest in human habitations. The discovery * of speci- 

 mens in the Crimean peninsula living under dead 

 leaves, vegetable detritus and stones, in woods and 

 copses far from any human habitation, is a fact of 

 considerable interest, and it is perhaps permissible now 

 to regard Southern Russia as the centre whence this 

 ubiquitous insect has spread. 



Cockroaches have a great penchant for human food 

 and articles of human manufacture, and thus with the 

 march of civilization some species have become dis- 

 seminated throughout the world. Periplaneta ameri- 

 cana is another of these cosmopolitan species ; it is 

 even more repulsive than its relative the " black 

 beetle," for it is very much larger. It is common on 

 board ships and is probably the species of which 

 Captain John Smith, of Virginia fame, wrote in 1624 

 "a certaine India Bug, called by the Spaniards a 

 Cacarootch, the which creeping into Chests they eat 

 and defile with their ill-scented dung." Periplaneta 

 australasice is yet another cosmopolitan cockroach and 

 the specific names of these three forms, orientalis, 

 americana, and australasicz, indicate that the old natu- 

 ralists regarded the East, America, and Australia as the 

 three centres whence the species spread to Europe ; 



1 Ann. Mus. Zool. St. Petersburg, XII. (1907), p. 401 [see Note 10, 

 P- 



