Cockroaches, Locusts, Grasshoppers, and Crickets 159 
hesitate to prey upon a weaker brother when opportunity offers. I have 
often surprised them feasting on the bodies of their com¬ 
panions; and of about forty imprisoned together in a 
box, at the end of a week but six were living. The 
heads, wings, and legs of their dead companions were all 
that remained to show that the weaker had succumbed 
to the stronger—that the fittest, and in this case the 
fattest, had survived in the deadly struggle for existence.” 
These crickets live in cracks in the soil, or under 
stones or logs, or sometimes make burrows. 
The genus Nemobius contains a number of little 
crickets known as “striped ground-crickets,” which are 
less than half an inch long, are dusky brownish with hairy 
head and thorax, and have faint blackish longitudinal 
stripes on the head. “Unlike their larger cousins, the 
field-crickets, they do not wait for darkness before seek¬ 
ing their food, but wherever the grass has been cropped 
short, whether on shaded hillside in the full glare of Fl ^riped"gro*uTd 1 - 
the noonday sun along the beaten roadway, mature speci¬ 
mens may be seen by hundreds during the days of early 
autumn.” They are powerful jumpers and readily evade 
attempts to capture them. They feed on living vegetation 
and on all kinds of decaying animal matter, and because of 
their abundance and voracious appetite must do much 
damage at times. Scudder gives the following account of 
the singing of the wingless striped cricket, Nemobius vittatus 
(Fig. 225), our commonest species: “The chirping of the 
striped cricket is very similar to that of the black field-cricket, 
and may be expressed by r-r-r-u , pronounced as though it 
were a French word. The note is trilled forcibly, and lasts 
a variable length of time. One of these insects was once 
Fig. 226. — The observed while singing to its mate. At first the song was 
cricket ^ (Ecan an d frequently broken; afterwards it grew impetuous, 
thus niveus „ forcible, and more prolonged; then it decreased in volume 
(Natural size.) anc j ex t e nt until it became quite soft and feeble. At this 
point the male began to approach 
the female, uttering a series of 
twittering chirps; the female ran 
away, and the male, after a short 
chase, returned to his old haunt, , 
. . .11 • 1 Fig. 227 .—Cacanthus jasciatus, female. (After 
Singing with the same Vigor, but Lugger; natural size indicated by line.) 
striped g 
cricket, Nemobius 
fasciatus; form vit¬ 
tatus, female. (After 
Lugger; about 
twice natural size.) 
