OBSER VA TIONS ON INSECTS. 339 



neighbouring houses, which swarm with them. How tho 

 females, that seem to have no perfect wings that they can 

 use, can contrive to get from house to house, does not so 

 readily appear. These, like many insects, when they find 

 their present abodes overstocked, have powers of migrating 

 to fresh quarters. Since the blattce have been so much kept 

 under, the crickets have greatly increased in number. 

 WHITE. 



GRYLLUS DOMESTICUS. HOUSE CRICKET. 



November. After the servants are gone to bed, the 

 kitchen hearth swarms with minute crickets not so large as 

 fleas, which must have been lately hatched. So that these 

 domestic insects, cherished by the influence of a constant 

 large fire, regard not the season of the year, but produce 

 their young at a time when their congeners are either dead, 

 or laid up for the winter, to pass away the uncomfortable 

 months in the profoundest slumbers, and a state of torpidity 



When house-crickets are out, and running about in a 

 room in the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two 

 or three shrill notes, as it were for a signal to their fellows, 

 that they may escape to their crannies and lurking holes, to 

 avoid danger. WHITE. 



OIMEX LINEARIS. 



August 12th, 1775. Cimices lineares are now in high 

 copulation on ponds and pools. The females, who vastly 

 exceed the males in bulk, dart and shoot along on the 

 surface of the water with the males on their backs. When 

 a female chooses to be disengaged, she rears, and jumps, and 

 plunges, like an unruly colt; the lover thus dismounted j 

 soon finds a new mate. The females, as fast as their 



