HOUSEHOLD AND CAMP INSECTS 57 



Crickets 



These black, chirping-, nocturnal insects*^^ and others occasionally 

 make their way into houses and, for the most part, are not unwel- 

 come. Sometimes they cause serious injury. Doctor Lintner records 

 a case where a suit of clothes just from the tailor was completely 

 ruined in a night by the common black field cricket/^ which had 

 entered an open window in some numbers. Such injury is excep- 

 tional. Crickets can be destroyed where necessary, by the use of 

 ground-up carrots or potatoes to which a liberal amount of arsenic 

 has been added. Recent experiments have also shown that they 

 succumb readily to the grasshopper bait composed of twenty pounds 

 of bran, i pound of Paris green, 2 quarts of cheap syrup, three 

 oranges or lemons and 3^2 gallons of water. The bran and Pans 

 green are thoroughly mixed while dry; the juice of the lemons or 

 oranges should be squeezed into the water and the remaining pulp 

 and peel chopped fine and put in the water and the syrup added. 

 The poisoned bran is then well dampened or mixed with this liquid. 

 It is necessary to put the bait only in localities where the crickets 

 are abundant. This is a deadly poison and should not be distrib- 

 uted where domestic animals, especially fowls, would have ready 

 access to any quantity. Crickets may also be caught by taking 

 advantage of their liking for liquids and placing low vessels con- 

 taining beer or other fluids about their haunts. 



FOOD PESTS 

 House Ants 



There are several species of ants likely to occur in houses. These 

 little insects are not specially destructive or obnoxious aside from 

 their faculty of getting into everything.. 



The little red ant*^* is particularly troublesome, since its small 

 size, it being only about one-sixteenth of an inch long, enables it to 

 enter almost any receptacle not hermetically sealed. Furthermore, 

 this little pest is Ytry prolific and occasionally literally overruns 

 buildings to the serious discomfort of the inhabitants. This tiny 

 species is perhaps the most common and the most abhorred of all, 

 owing to the difficulty of eradicating it. 



6-Gryllus domesticus Linn, and others. 

 63Gryllus luctuosus Serv. 

 64Monomorium pharaonis Linn. 



