NOISES OF INSECTS. 531 



domesticus), though it is often heard by day, is most noisy in the night. 

 As soon as it grows dusk, its shrill note increases till it becomes quite an 

 annoyance, and interrupts conversation. When the male sings, he elevates 

 the elytra so as to form an acute angle with the body, and then rubs them 

 against each other by a horizontal and very brisk motion.^ The learned 

 Scaliger is said to have been particularly delighted with the chirping of 

 these animals, and was accustomed to keep them in a box for his amuse- 

 ment. We are told that they have been sold in Africa at a high price, 

 and employed to procure sleep.^ If they could be used to supply the 

 place of laudanum, and lull the restlessness of busy thought in this coun- 

 try, the exchange would be beneficial. Like many other noisy persons, 

 crickets like to hear nobody louder than themselves. Ledelius relates 

 that a woman, who had tried in vain every method she could think of to 

 banish them from her house, at last got rid of them by the noise made 

 by drums and trumpets, which she had procured to entertain her guests 

 at a wedding. They instantly forsook the house, and she heard of them 

 no more.^ 



The field-cricket (Gryllus campestris) makes a shrilling noise — still 

 more sonorous than that of the house-cricket — which may be heard at a 

 great distance. MoufFet tells us, that their sound may be imitated by rub- 

 bing their elytra, after they are taken off, against each other."^ " Sounds," 

 says Mr. White, " do not always give us pleasure according to their 

 sweetness and melody ; nor do harsh sounds always displease. — Thus the 

 shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvelously 

 delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of 

 every thing that is rural, verdurous, and joyous." One of these crickets 

 when confined in a paper cage and set in the sun, and supplied with plants 

 moistened with water — for if they are not wetted it will die — will feed, 

 and thrive, and become so merry and loud, as to be irksome in the same 

 room where a person is sitting.^ 



Having never seen a female of that extraordinary animal the mole- 

 cricket {Gryllotalpa vulgaris), I cannot say what difference obtains in 

 the reticulation of the elytra of the two sexes. The male varies in this 

 respect from the other male crickets, for they bave no circular area, nor 

 do the nervures run so irregularly ; the areolets, however, towards their 

 base are large, with very tense membrane. The base itself also is scarcely 

 at all elevated. Circumstances these, which demonstrate the propriety of 

 considering them distinct from the other crickets. This creature is not, 

 however, mute. Where they abound they may be heard about the middle 

 of April singing their love-ditty in a low, dull, jarring, uninterrupted note, 

 not unlike that of the goat-sucker (^Caprimulgus europctus), but more 

 inward.^ I remember once tracing one by its shrilling to the very hole, 

 under a stone in the bank of my canal, in which it was concealed. We 

 learn from Mr. Newport, who, in his very valuable treatise on insects in 



1 De Geer, iii. 517. See also White, Nat. Hist. ii. 76. ;— and Ray, Hist. Ins 63. 



» Mouftet, 136. 3 Goldsmith's Animat. Nat. vi. 28. * Ins. Theatr. 13-1. 



* Nat. Hist. ii. 73. Yet it would appear that when wholly removed from the scent of their 

 mother-earth they are silent, f6r it is stated by Southey that on the ship of Cabeza de Vaca 

 approaching the coast of Brazil, the proximity of land was inferred, and as the result proved, 

 truly, by a ground cricket which a soldier had brought from Cadiz then beginning again to 

 sing. {Hist, of Brazil.) 



« Nat. Hist. ii. 81. 



