158 Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 
Fig 
To sing, the males lift their wing-covers at an angle of about 45 0 over the 
back, and strongly rub together the bases. Their chirping is made either 
in the daytime or night, and is a love call or song for their mates. We have 
several common crickets in dwellings, one, Gryllus domesticus (Fig. 223) 
being the European house-cricket, the “ cricket on the 
hearth,” which is becoming at home here, being espe¬ 
cially met With in Canada. It is pale brown and less 
than an inch long. Gryllus luctuosus and G. assimilis 
are two native crickets which are common in houses; 
they are black with brownish-black wing-covers, larger 
and more robust than domesticus , and with the folded 
wings projecting backward beyond the wing-covers like 
pointed tails. These house-crickets are most active 
at night, and seem to have a taste for almost any 
food-product in the house. They will eat each other 
when other food is scarce. If they become so nu¬ 
merous in the house that they need to be got rid of, 
advantage may be taken of their liking for sweet 
liquids by exposing smooth-walled vessels half filled 
H The r Euro- suc ^ ^T^ds, i nto which the crickets will fall and 
pean Touse - cricket, drown in their attempts to get at the food. The most 
female ™ *(After^Lug’ a bundant and wide-spread outdoors cricket is Gryllus 
ger; natural size in- abbreviatus (Fig. 224), the short-winged field-cricket, 
dicated by line.) The w j n g S are sometimes wanting, but more often pres¬ 
ent and shorter than the wing-covers, which in the females are themselves 
unusually short, reaching but half-way to the end of the abdomen. The 
slender ovipositor is as long as the 
body, and the hind femora are very 
thick and have a red spot at the 
base on either side. The life-history 
of this common insect is not yet fully 
known, some writers stating that the 
eggs laid in autumn do not hatch until 
the following spring, the insect thus ^ 
passing the winter in the egg stage, Fig. 224.—' The short-winged cricket, Gryllus 
while others have taken half-grown abbreviatus. (Natural size.) 
young from beneath logs in late autumn and in midwinter. The field- 
cricket is “nocturnal, omnivorous, and a cannibal. Avoiding the light 
of day,” says Blatchley, “he ventures forth as soon as darkness has fallen, 
in search of food, and all appears to be fish which comes to his net. Of 
fruit, vegetables, grass, and carrion he seems equally fond, and does not 
