STRUCTURE OF ITS FOOT. 109 



took place. To put the question of their cannibalism 

 to a still more conclusive test, I next took two 

 crickets and two cockroaches {Blatta orientalis), and 

 confined them for eighty hours in a similar manner ; 

 at the expiration of that period they were all living 

 and active, and had not suffered from any attack on 

 each other. 



During the time these unfortunate crickets were 

 in confinement, I observed that they repeatedly tried 

 to climb up the sides of the glass, but always in 

 vain, falling backwards at each successive attempt. 

 This appeared to me singular, as I had watched a 

 grasshopper (Locusta grossa) walking up the glass 

 pane of a window, and I knew no reason why 

 crickets should not be able to do the same. But to 

 reason from analogy, is a very uncertain mode of 

 arriving at just conclusions in Natural Historj'^. I 

 believe it is Dr. Fleming who remarks, that no person 

 from seeing the fallow-deer feeding on graminivorous 

 plants, could ever have imagined from analogy, that 

 the reindeer fed upon a lichen. The conclusion I 

 -drew respecting the cricket, was as erroneous as the 

 analogical inference in the other case would have 

 been, and it showed me the propriety of subjecting 

 every thing relating to the economy of insects to the 

 test of personal observation, so far as circumstances 

 wiU permit of our doing so. On examining, there- 



