46 
ORTHOPTERA. 
warm sunny weather, however, crickets prefer the open 
air, and may be found within the crevices of garden 
walls and similar places. Crickets are said to have the 
good character of destroying their cursorial cousins, the 
cockroaches. I do not know how far this is correct. In 
places where they abound to such an extent as to be a 
perfect nuisance, it may be useful to know that they 
may be destroyed by placing phials half filled with beer 
or other liquid in their haunts. Into these they crowd 
till they are full. The cricket’s chirp is by some looked 
upon as a good omen, foretelling cheerfulness and plenty. 
This notion is pretty general in England. Cowper, ad¬ 
dressing the cricket “ chirping on his kitchen hearth,” 
alludes to this superstition:— 
“ Wheresoe’er be thine abode, 
Always harbinger of good. ; 
In Charles Dickens’ little tale this same notion is em¬ 
bodied : “ It’s sure to bring us good fortune, John ! It 
alw T ays has been so. To have a cricket on the hearth is 
the luckiest thing in the world.” Nevertheless, the 
cricket’s chirp is sometimes supposed to forebode disaster 
and death. When Blonzelind expired, Gay says— 
“ And shrilling crickets in the chimney cry'd.” 
Similarly, in the “ Oedipus ” of Dryden and Lee— 
4i Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death !” 
Gilbert White, of Selborne, says—“ Crickets are the 
house-wife’s barometer, foretelling her when it will rain, 
and are prognostics sometimes, she thinks, of ill or good 
luck ; of the death of a near relative, or the approach of 
