CRICKETS. 
465 
Saw a couple of flies sailing slowly about the room ; they arc 
seldom seen here in winter. The spiders, so common in the au- 
tumn, have either been killed by the cold, or lie stowed away 
until spring. The whole insect world is silent and invisible, save 
the cricket. This is the only creature of its kind heard about the 
house during our long winters. We have one just now living 
somewhere about the chimney, which sings with a very clear, 
spirited note, especially of an evening when the fire burns bright- 
ly. It is said that our crickets in this country are all field crick- 
ets, which have found their way into houses by accident ; they 
seem to like their lodgings very well, for they chirrup away gayly 
at all seasons, even when their companions in the fields are buried 
deep under the snow. They do well to haunt our houses in this 
way, for it makes quite different creatures of them, adding ano- 
ther, and apparently a merry, cheerful, half to their lives. They 
do not seem to require the annual sleep of their companions out 
of doors. The true house-cricket of Europe is not found in Amer- 
ica. Whether the voices, or rather the chirrup, of both is pre- 
cisely alike, we cannot remember ; probably there is not much 
diflference, if any. It is well known that the sounds made by 
these little creatures are produced by playing their wing-covers ; 
so that, in fact, they rather fiddle than sing. It is the male only 
who is the musician, the females are quiet. 
We owe the Mice and Rats which infest our dwellings, en- 
tirely to the Old World. The common brown rat, already so numer- 
ous here, is said to have come from Asia, and only appeared in Eu- 
rope about the beginning of the seventeenth century, or some two 
hundred and fifty years since. The English say it came over with 
the Hanoverian kings. The German mercenaries, the " Hessians," 
