IN FEATHERS AND FUR. 193 
A HUNDRED BLACK BABIES. 
You think that must be a funny sight ? Well, it is, and the 
funniest of it is, that they're all found in one nursery, about as big 
as an egg. 
I'm afraid you'll never see it though, for even if you were 
small enough to go through the long passages and many rooms the 
careful Mamma builds, before you got to the nursery, you'd be sure 
to meet that same Mamma, in some narrow passage, and you'd find 
her quite ready to fight you. And though she's nothing but a 
poor little Mole Cricket, you'd find her very formidable if you were 
small enough to enter her house. 
This little Cricket — see her in the picture, with her nice snug 
home where she has left hundreds of eggs — always lives out in 
damp grounds, by rivers, where she burrows out her curious house, 
is own cousin to those you have heard chirping around the hearth 
in country houses. She has various names. In some places it is 
Churr Worm, in others Croaker, and in still others Earth Crab. 
The house Crickets prefer to burrow into the mortar between 
bricks, and live by the fire, where their cheerful chirp is very pleas- 
ant to hear. In fact, in some places — Spain for instance — they are 
so much liked that they are kept in cages. 
I don't suppose you ever heard that these funny little black 
fellows, belong to the same family as the grasshoppers and locusts, 
and that they also have four wings. And more than that, they have 
five bright yellow eyes, two large and three small ones. I think it 
must be that they can see too well, for they don't like the light at 
all, and always run to their holes if one is brought into the room. 
They are very fond of water, and will even eat up damp clothes 
if they get a chance. Sometimes they seem to get tired of living 
in one house, or perhaps they catch the moving mania from the 
people they live with. At any rate, whatever the reason, they will 
suddenly desert a house, going off in crowds to find a new home. 
There have been* many superstitions about the innocent little 
fellows. Many think they bring good luck to a house, and others 
think they can tell what is going to happen in a family. (If they 
can, I never heard of their telling anybody.) 
*3 
