240 INDIRECT INJURIES CAUSED BY INSECTS. 



meat, clothes and books, even attacks persons in their 

 sleep, and the extremities of the dead and dying 3 . 



The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still 

 more annoying insect than the common cock-roach, add- 

 ing an incessant noise to its ravages ; since, although, 

 for a short time, it may not be unpleasant to hear 

 " the cricket chirrup in the hearth," 



so constant a din every evening must very much inter- 

 rupt comfort and conversation. These garrulous ani- 

 mals, which live in a kind of artificial torrid zone, are 

 very thirsty souls, and are frequently found drowned in 

 pans of water, milk, broth, and the like. Whatever is 

 moist, even stockings or linen hung out to dry, is to 

 them a bonne louche ; they will eat the scummings of 

 pots, yeast, crumbs of bread, and even salt, or any thing 

 within their reach. Sometimes they are so abundant in 

 houses as to become absolute pests, flying into the can- 

 dles and into people's faces. 



At Cuddapa, in the ceded districts to the northward 

 of Mysore, Captain Green was much annoyed by a 

 jumping insect, which from his description I should take 

 for the larva of a species of cricket. They were of a dun 

 colour, and from half to three-fourths of an inch in 

 length. They abounded at night, and were very inju- 

 rious to papers and books, which they both discoloured 

 and devoured ; leather also was eaten by them. Such 

 was their boldness and avidity, that they attacked the 

 exposed parts of the body when you were asleep, nib- 

 bling the ends of the fingers, particularly the skin under 

 the nails, which was only discoverable by a slight sore- 



a Drurr's Insects, iii. Preface. 



