OF SELBORFE. 
269 
when it will rain^ and are prognostic sometimes^ slie 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 shift 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. ^ Their shrilling noise is 
occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch 
hearth- crickets, and, plapng with them as they do with 
Exod. viii. 3. 
