158 LITTLE FOLKS 
You can't scare this fellow with a light, by a good deal — he'll 
almost turn and fight you, he's so bold. Then he has an outrageous 
fashion of eating his brothers and sisters, cousins and babies. A 
regular cannibal, he is. 
Such eaters you never heard of. Why, they will eat the 
thread your shoes arc sewed with to get the wax, your muslin 
dresses and linen pants for the starch, and in fact, he is an unmiti- 
gated nuisance. 
I think it would be a good plan to stew them all up for oil to 
relieve neuralgia ; don't you ? 
I must tell you a little more about the way Mamma Cockroach 
puts up her eggs, so that they may be safe from all enemies. She 
makes a tiny bit of a turnover. Don't laugh ; it is — or at least it 
looks — exactly like the apple turnovers your grandmother used to 
make for you. It is all round and smooth on one side, and pressed 
together in little notches on the other side. If you should open it 
you would find sixteen tiny eggs in two rows, like peas in a pod. 
The scientific name of this turnover is a word which means "egg- 
purse." When the little ones are hatched out, they escape through 
the notched side, and it closes after them, and looks exactly as it 
did before. I have read a story of two girls who were fond of 
these disgusting creatures — to eat. They were at school in 
London, and at night they would get up, go down to the kitchen, 
catch and eat the Cockroaches. And even after they were found 
out, they could hardly be kept from it. 
The smell which always hangs around the haunts of this 
creature is extremely disagreeable. 
A gentleman who once occupied a cabin in a ship, with some 
thousands of Cockroaches, tells some amusing things about them. 
I give as nearly as possible his own words. 
" There are two kinds in my cabin, one about an inch long, and 
the other two inches and a half. They have (the larger ones) legs of 
great size and strength, requiring fifteen or twenty ants to carry 
one off. On these legs he squats, sticking out his elbows — as it 
were — except when he rises on his forelegs, which he does to stare 
you in the face, or look about. He prefers walking slowly, but if 
you make a noise, he quickly takes the hint, and hurries off. 
Mamma Cockroach attaches her eggs to anything she likes — a 
dress coat, a cork, a biscuit, or a book. 
"In character they are cunning as a fox, greedy as gluttons, 
