290 OBSERVATIONS ON INSECTS AND YEEMES 
GRYLLUS DOMESTICUS.— HOUSE CRICKET. 
November. After the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen hearth 
swarms with minute crickets not so large as fleas, which must have 
been lately hatched. So that these domestic insects, cherished by the 
influence of a constant large fire, regard not the season of the year, but 
produce their young at a time when their congeners are either dead, 
or laid up for the winter, to pass away the uncomfortable months in 
the profoundest slumbers, and a state of torpidity. 
When house-crickets are out, and running about in a room in the 
night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three shrill notes, as it 
were for a signal to their fellows, that they may escape to their crannies 
and lurking holes, to avoid danger.— White. 
CIMEX LIMARIS. 
August 12, 1775. Cimices lineares are now in high copulation on 
ponds and pools. The females, who vastly exceed the males in bulk, 
dart and shoot along on the surface of the water with the males on 
their backs. When a female chooses to be disengaged, she rears, and 
jumps, and plunges, like an unruly colt ; the lover thus dismounted, 
soon finds a new mate. The females, as fast as their curiosities are 
satisfied, retire to another part of the lake, perhaps to deposit their 
foetus in quiet ; hence the sexes are found separate, except where 
generation is going on. From the multitude of minute young of all 
gradations of sizes, these insects seem without doubt to be viviparous. 
White. 
PHAL^KA QUERCUS. 
Most of our oaks are naked of leaves, and even the Holt in general; 
having been ravaged by the caterpillars of a 
small pTialcBua which is of a pale yellow colour. 
These insects, though a feeble race, yet, from 
their infinite numbers, are of wonderful efiect, 
being able to destroy the foliage of whole forests 
and districts. At this season they leave their 
aurelia, and issue forth in their fly-state, swarming and covering the 
trees and hedges. 
In a field at Greatham, I saw a flight of swifts busied in catching 
their prey near the ground ; and found they were hawking after these 
phalcBuce. The aurelice of this moth is shining and as black as jet ; 
and lies wrapped up in a leaf of the tree, which is rolled round it, and 
secured at the ends by a web, to prevent the maggot from falling out. 
White. 
I suspect that the insect here meant is not the phalcena quercus, but 
