290 OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND VEUMES. 



GEYLLUS 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. 



CIMEX LINEAEIS. 



August 12, 1775. Cimices linear es 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, 

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

 satisfied, retire to another part of the lake, perhaps to deposit their 

 foatus in quiet; hence the sexes are found separate, except where 

 generation is going on. From the multitude of minute young of all 

 gradations of sizes, these insects seem without doubt to be viviparous, 



WHITE. 



QUERCUS. 



Most of our oaks are naked of leaves, and even the Holt in general, 

 having been ravaged by the caterpillars of a 

 small phalcena which is of a pale yellow colour. 

 These insects, though a feeble race, yet, from 

 their infinite numbers, are of wonderful effect, 

 being able to destroy the foliage of whole forests 

 and districts. At this season they leave their 

 aurelia, and issue forth in their fly-state, swarming and covering the 

 trees and hedges. 



In a field at Greatham, I saw a flight of swifts busied in catching 

 their prey near the ground ; and found they were hawking after these 

 phcdcenm. The aurelice of this moth is shining and as black as jet ; 

 and lies wrapped up in a leaf of the tree, which is rolled round it, and 

 secured at the ends by a web, to prevent the maggot from falling out. 



WHITE. 



I suspect that the insect here meant is not the phalcena quercus, but 



