236 HOUSE-CRICKET. 



from the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a 

 thirsty race, arid shew a great propensity for liquids, being 

 found frequently drowned in pans of water, milk, broth, or the 

 like. Whatever is moist they affect ; and, therefore, often 

 gnaw holes in wet woollen stockings and aprons that are hung 

 to the fire ; they are the housewife's barometer, foretelling her 

 when it will rain ; and are prognostics sometimes, she thinks, 

 of ill or good luck ; of the death of a near relation, or the 

 approach of an absent lover. By being the constant com- 

 panions of her solitary hours, they naturally become the objects 

 of her superstition. * These crickets are not only very thirsty, 

 but very voracious ; for they will eat the scummings of pots, 

 and yeast, salt, and crumbs of bread ; and any kitchen offal or 

 sweepings. In the summer we have observed them to fly, 

 when it became dusk, out of the windows, and over the 

 neighbouring roofs. This feat of activity accounts 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 remarkable, 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 bed-chambers, 

 and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in their kneading- 

 troughs." f Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a brisk 

 attrition of their wings. Cats 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. 



* Sir William Jardine says, that, in Dumfriesshire, it is considered 

 lucky to have crickets in a house ; but if they disappear from one which 

 they have long inhabited, it is locked upon as foreboding some calamity to 

 rhe family Ei>. 



f Exod. viii. 3. 



