ORTHOPTERA. 
223 
pretty secure footing in this country, particularly 
jnsea-port towns. This is B. Americana , or kakerlacj 
a pretty large species with very long antennas, and a 
yellowish thorax haying a hrown border and two spots 
of the same colour on the disk. All the truly indi- 
genous Blattse are comparatively of small size and 
seldom or never occur in such profusion as to occasion 
much injury or annoyance. Even the depredations 
of the common B . orientalis are insignificant compared 
with those of foreign lands, where species of more 
formidable dimensions are sometimes so abundant and 
obnoxious as to produce no trifling inconvenience to 
the inhabitants. 
“ The cockroachos,” says Drury in his work on 
exotic insects, "are another race of pestiferous beings, 
equally noisome and mischievous to natives or stran- 
gers, but particularly to collectors. These nasty and 
voracious insects fly out in the evenings, and commit 
monstrous depredations ; they plunder and erode all 
hinds of victuals, dressed and undressed, and damage 
all sorts of clothing, especially those which are touched 
with powder, pomatum, and similar substances, every 
thing made of leather, books, paper, and various other 
articles, which, if they do not destroy, at least they soil, 
as they frequently deposit a drop of their excrement 
where they settle, and, some way or other, by that 
means damage what they cannot devour. They fly into 
the flame of candles, and sometimes into the dishes ; are 
very fond of ink and of oil, into which they are apt to 
fall and perish. In this case they soon become most 
offensively putrid, so that a man might as well sit over 
