OF SELBORNE. 269 



when it will rain, and are prognostic 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 sjiift their quar- 



HOUSE CRICKET. 



ters 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.-" 1 Their shrilling noise is 

 occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch 

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



1 Exod. viii. 3. 



