NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 243 



and over the neighbouring roofs. This feat of activity ac- 

 counts for the sudden manner in which they often leave 

 their haunts, as it does for the method by which they come 

 to houses where they were not known before. It is remark- 

 able that many sorts of insects seem never to use their 

 wings but when they have a mind to shift their quarters 

 and settle new colonies. When in the air they move 

 "volatu undoso" in waves or curves, like woodpeckers, 

 opening and shutting their wings at every stroke, and so 

 are always rising or sinking 



When they increase to a great degree, as they did once 

 in the house where I am now writing, they become noisome 

 pests, flying into the candles, and dashing into people's 

 faces ; but may be blasted and destroyed by gunpowder 

 discharged into their crevices and crannies. In families at 

 such ^times they are like Pharaoh's plague of frogs " in 

 their bedchambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, 

 and in their kneading troughs."* Their shrilling noise is 

 occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Oats catch 

 hearth-crickets, and, playing with them as they do with 

 mice, devour them. Crickets may be destroyed, like wasps, 

 by phials half filled with beer, or any liquid, and set in their 

 haunts ; for being always eager to drink, they will crowd in 

 till the bottles are full. 



* Exod. viii. 3. 



