Linnæus was in error in stating that the domestic cat (Felis maniculatus, Teemminck) is not infested with fleas; for on kittens in particular they abound as numerously as upon dogs.[27]
The vending of bug-poison in the London streets is seldom followed as a regular source of living. We have met with persons who remember to have seen men selling penny packets of vermin poison, but to find out the vendors themselves was next to an impossibility. The men seem merely to take to the business as a living when all other sources have failed. All, however, agree in acknowledging that there is such a street trade, but that the living it affords is so precarious that few men stop at it longer than two or three weeks.
Perhaps the most eminent firm of the bug-destroyers in London is that of Messrs. Tiffin and Son; but they have pursued their calling in the streets, and rejoice in the title of “Bug-Destroyers to Her Majesty and the Royal Family.”
Mr. Tiffin, the senior partner in this house, most kindly obliged me with the following statement. It may be as well to say that Mr. Tiffin appears to have paid much attention to the subject of bugs, and has studied with much earnestness the natural history of this vermin.
“We can trace our business back,” he said, “as far as 1695, when one of our ancestors first turned his attention to the destruction of bugs. He was a lady’s stay-maker—men used to make them in those days, though, as far as that is concerned, it was a man that made my mother’s dresses. This ancestor found some bugs in his house—a young colony of them, that had introduced themselves without his permission, and he didn’t like their company, so he tried to turn them out of doors again, I have heard it said, in various ways. It is in history, and it has been handed down in my own family as well, that bugs were first introduced into England after the fire of London, in the timber that was brought for rebuilding the city, thirty years after the fire, and it was about that time that my ancestor first discovered the colony of bugs in his house. I can’t say whether he studied the subject of bug-destroying, or whether he found out his stuff by accident, but he certainly did invent a compound which completely destroyed the bugs, and, having been so successful in his own house, he named it to some of his customers who were similarly plagued, and that was the commencement of the present connexion, which has continued up to this time.
“At the time of the illumination for the Peace, I thought I must have something over my shop, that would be both suitable for the event and to my business; so I had a transparency done, and stretched on a big frame, and lit up by gas, on which was written—
MAY THE
DESTROYERS OF PEACE
BE DESTROYED BY US.
TIFFIN & SON,
BUG-DESTROYERS TO HER MAJESTY.
“Our business was formerly carried on in the Strand, where both my father and myself were born; in fact, I may say I was born to the bug business.
“I remember my father as well as possible; indeed, I worked with him for ten or eleven years. He used, when I was a boy, to go out to his work killing bugs at his customers’ houses with a sword by his side and a cocked-hat and bag-wig on his head—in fact, dressed up like a regular dandy. I remember my grandmother, too, when she was in the business, going to the different houses, and seating herself in a chair, and telling the men what they were to do, to clean the furniture and wash the woodwork.
“I have customers in our books for whom our house has worked these 150 years; that is, my father and self have worked for them and their fathers. We do the work by contract, examining the house every year. It’s a precaution to keep the place comfortable. You see, servants are apt to bring bugs in their boxes; and, though there may be only two or three bugs perhaps hidden in the woodwork and the clothes, yet they soon breed if left alone.
“We generally go in the spring, before the bugs lay their eggs; or, if that time passes, it ought to be done before June, before their eggs are hatched, though it’s never too late to get rid of a nuisance.
“I mostly find the bugs in the bedsteads. But, if they are left unmolested, they get numerous and climb to the tops of the rooms, and about the corners of the ceilings. They colonize anywhere they can, though they’re very high-minded and prefer lofty places. Where iron bedsteads are used the bugs are more in the rooms, and that’s why such things are bad. They don’t keep a bug away from the person sleeping. Bugs’ll come, if they’re thirty yards off.
“I knew a case of a bug who used to come every night about thirty or forty feet—it was an immense large room—from a corner of the room to visit an old lady. There was only one bug, and he’d been there for a long time. I was sent for to find him out. It took me a long time to catch him. In that instance I had to examine every part of the room, and when I got him I gave him an extra nip to serve him out. The reason why I was so bothered was, the bug had hidden itself near the window, the last place I should have thought of looking for him, for a bug never by choice faces the light; but when I came to inquire about it, I found that this old lady never rose till three o’clock in the day, and the window-curtains were always drawn, so that there was no light like.
“Lord! yes, I am often sent for to catch a single bug. I’ve had to go many, many miles—even 100 or 200—into the country, and perhaps catch only half-a-dozen bugs after all; but then that’s all that are there, so it answers our employer’s purpose as well as if they were swarming.
“I work for the upper classes only; that is, for carriage company and such-like approaching it, you know. I have noblemen’s names, the first in England, on my books.
“My work is more method; and I may call it a scientific treating of the bugs rather than wholesale murder. We don’t care about the thousands, it’s the last bug we look for, whilst your carpenters and upholsterers leave as many behind them, perhaps, as they manage to catch.
“The bite of the bug is very curious. They bite all persons the same(?) but the difference of effect lays in the constitution of the parties. I’ve never noticed that a different kind of skin makes any difference in being bitten. Whether the skin is moist or dry, it don’t matter. Wherever bugs are, the person sleeping in the bed is sure to be fed on, whether they are marked or not; and as a proof, when nobody has slept in the bed for some time, the bugs become quite flat; and, on the contrary, when the bed is always occupied, they are round as a ‘lady-bird.’
“The flat bug is more ravenous, though even he will allow you time to go to sleep before he begins with you; or at least until he thinks you ought to be asleep. When they find all quiet, not even a light in the room will prevent their biting; but they are seldom or ever found under the bed-clothes. They like a clear ground to get off, and generally bite round the edges of the nightcap or the nightdress. When they are found in the bed, it’s because the parties have been tossing about, and have curled the sheets round the bugs.
“The finest and the fattest bugs I ever saw were those I found in a black man’s bed. He was the favourite servant of an Indian general. He didn’t want his bed done by me; he didn’t want it touched. His bed was full of ’em, no beehive was ever fuller. The walls and all were the same, there wasn’t a patch that wasn’t crammed with them. He must have taken them all over the house wherever he went.
“I’ve known persons to be laid up for months through bug-bites. There was a very handsome fair young lady I knew once, and she was much bitten about the arms, and neck, and face, so that her eyes were so swelled up she couldn’t see. The spots rose up like blisters, the same as if stung with a nettle, only on a very large scale. The bites were very much inflamed, and after a time they had the appearance of boils.
“Some people fancy, and it is historically recorded, that the bug smells because it has no vent; but this is fabulous, for they have a vent. It is not the human blood neither that makes them smell, because a young bug who has never touched a drop will smell. They breathe, I believe, through their sides; but I can’t answer for that, though it’s not through the head. They haven’t got a mouth, but they insert into the skin the point of a tube, which is quite as fine as a hair, through which they draw up the blood. I have many a time put a bug on the back of my hand, to see how they bite; though I never felt the bite but once, and then I suppose the bug had pitched upon a very tender part, for it was a sharp prick, something like that of a leech-bite.
“I once had a case of lice-killing, for my process will answer as well for them as for bugs, though it’s a thing I should never follow by choice. Lice seem to harbour pretty much the same as bugs do. I found them in the furniture. It was a nurse that brought them into the house, though she was as nice and clean a looking woman as ever I saw. I should almost imagine the lice must have been in her, for they say there is a disease of that kind; and if the tics breed in sheep, why should not lice breed in us? for we’re but live matter, too. I didn’t like myself at all for two or three days after that lice-killing job, I can assure you; it’s the only case of the kind I ever had, and I can promise you it shall be the last.
“I was once at work on the Princess Charlotte’s own bedstead. I was in the room, and she asked me if I had found anything, and I told her no; but just at that minute I did happen to catch one, and upon that she sprang up on the bed, and put her hand on my shoulder, to look at it. She had been tormented by the creature, because I was ordered to come directly, and that was the only one I found. When the Princess saw it, she said, ‘Oh, the nasty thing! That’s what tormented me last night; don’t let him escape.’ I think he looked all the better for having tasted royal blood.
“I also profess to kill beetles, though you can never destroy them so effectually as you can bugs; for, you see, beetles run from one house to another, and you can never perfectly get rid of them; you can only keep them under. Beetles will scrape their way and make their road round a fireplace, but how they manage to go from one house to another I can’t say, but they do.
“I never had patience enough to try and kill fleas by my process; it would be too much of a chivey to please me.
“I never heard of any but one man who seriously went to work selling bug poison in the streets. I was told by some persons that he was selling a first-rate thing, and I spent several days to find him out. But, after all, his secret proved to be nothing at all. It was train-oil, linseed and hempseed, crushed up all together, and the bugs were to eat it till they burst.
“After all, secrets for bug-poisons ain’t worth much, for all depends upon the application of them. For instance, it is often the case that I am sent for to find out one bug in a room large enough for a school. I’ve discovered it when the creature had been three or four months there, as I could tell by his having changed his jacket so often—for bugs shed their skins, you know. No, there was no reason that he should have bred; it might have been a single gentleman or an old maid.
“A married couple of bugs will lay from forty to fifty eggs at one laying. The eggs are oval, and are each as large as the thirty-second part of an inch; and when together are in the shape of a caraway comfit, and of a bluish-white colour. They’ll lay this quantity of eggs three times in a season. The young ones are hatched direct from the egg, and, like young partridges, will often carry the broken eggs about with them, clinging to their back. They get their fore-quarters out, and then they run about before the other legs are completely cleared.
“As soon as the bugs are born they are of a cream colour, and will take to blood directly; indeed, if they don’t get it in two or three days they die; but after one feed they will live a considerable time without a second meal. I have known old bugs to be frozen over in a horse-pond—when the furniture has been thrown in the water—and there they have remained for a good three weeks; still, after they have got a little bit warm in the sun’s rays they have returned to life again.
“I have myself kept bugs for five years and a half without food, and a housekeeper at Lord H——’s informed me that an old bedstead that I was then moving from a store-room was taken down forty-five years ago, and had not been used since, but the bugs in it were still numerous, though as thin as living skeletons. They couldn’t have lived upon the sap of the wood, it being worm-eaten and dry as a bone.
“A bug will live for a number of years, and we find that when bugs are put away in old furniture without food, they don’t increase in number; so that, according to my belief, the bugs I just mentioned must have existed forty-five years: besides, they were large ones, and very dark-coloured, which is another proof of age.
“It is a dangerous time for bugs when they are shedding their skins, which they do about four times in the course of a year; then they throw off their hard shell and have a soft coat, so that the least touch will kill them; whereas, at other times they will take a strong pressure. I have plenty of bug-skins, which I keep by me as curiosities, of all sizes and colours, and sometimes I have found the young bugs collected inside the old ones’ skins for warmth, as if they had put on their father’s great-coat. There are white bugs—albinoes you may call ’em—freaks of nature like.”
Cockroaches are even more voracious than crickets. A small species (Blatta Lapponica, Linn.), occasionally met with about London, is said to swarm numerously in the huts of the Laplanders, and will sometimes, in conjunction with a carrion-beetle (Silpha Lapponica, Linn.), devour, we are told, in a single day, their whole store of dried fish.
In London, and many other parts of the country, cockroaches, originally introduced from abroad, have multiplied so prodigiously as to be a great nuisance. They are often so numerous in kitchens and lower rooms in the metropolis as literally to cover the floor, and render it impossible for them to move, except over each other’s bodies. This, indeed, only happens after dark, for they are strictly night insects, and the instant a candle is intruded upon the assembly they rush towards their hiding-places, so that in a few seconds not one of the countless multitude is to be seen.
In consequence of their numbers, independently of their carnivorous propensities, they are driven to eat anything that comes in their way; and, besides devouring every species of kitchen-stuff, they gnaw clothes, leather, and books. They likewise pollute everything they crawl over, with an unpleasant nauseous smell.
These “black-beetles,” however, as they are commonly called, are harmless when compared with the foreign species, the giant cockroach (Blatta gigantea), which is not content with devouring the stores of the larder, but will attack human bodies, and even gnaw the extremities of the dead and dying.—(Drury’s Illustrations of Nat. Hist. iii. Pref.)
Cockroaches, at least the kind that is most abundant in Britain, hate the light, and never come forth from their hiding-places till the lights are removed or extinguished (the Blatta Germanica, however, which abounds in some houses, is bolder, making its appearance in the day, and running up the walls and over the tables, to the great annoyance of the inhabitants). In the London houses, especially on the ground-floor, they are most abundant, and consume everything they can find—flour, bread, meat, clothes, and even shoes. As soon as light, natural or artificial, appears, they all scamper off as fast as they can, and vanish in an instant.
These pests are not indigenous to this country, and perhaps nowhere in Europe, but are one of the evils which commerce has imported. In Captain Cook’s last voyage, the ships, while at Husheine, were infested with incredible numbers of these creatures, which it was found impossible by any means to destroy. Every kind of food, when exposed only for a few minutes, was covered with them, and pierced so full of holes, that it resembled a honeycomb. They were so fond of ink that they ate out the writing on labels. Captain Cook’s cockroaches were of two kinds—the Blatta Orientalis and Germanica.—(Encyc. Britan.)
The following fact we give from Mr. Douglas’s World of Insects:—
“Everybody has heard of a haunted house; nearly every house in and about London is haunted. Let the doubters, if they have the courage, go stealthily down to the kitchen at midnight, armed with a light and whatever other weapon they like, and they will see that beings of which Tam o’Shanter never dreamed, whose presence at daylight was only a myth, have here ‘a local habitation and a name.’ Scared from their nocturnal revels, the creatures run and scamper in all directions, until, in a short time, the stage is clear, and, as in some legend of diablerie, nothing remains but a most peculiar odour.
“These were no spirits, had nothing even of the fairy about them, but were veritable cockroaches, or ‘black-beetles’—as they are more commonly but erroneously termed—for they are not beetles at all. They have prodigious powers of increase, and are a corresponding nuisance. Kill as many as you will, except, perhaps, by poison, and you cannot extirpate them—the cry is, ‘Still they come.’
“One of the best ways to be rid of them is to keep a hedgehog, to which creature they are a favourite food, and his nocturnal habits make him awake to theirs. I have known cats eat cockroaches, but they do not thrive upon them.”
“One article of their food would hardly have been suspected,” says Mr. Newman, in a note communicated to the Entomological Society, at the meeting in February, 1855. “‘There is nothing new under the sun;’ so says the proverb. I believed, until a few days back, that I possessed the knowledge of a fact in the dietary economy of the cockroach of which entomologists were not cognisant, but I find myself forestalled; the fact is ‘as old as the hills.’ It is, that the cockroach seeks with diligence and devours with great gusto the common bed-bug.
“I will not mention names, but I am so confident of the veracity of the narrator, that I willingly take the entire responsibility of the following narrative:—
“‘Poverty makes one acquainted with strange bedfellows;’ and my informant bears willing testimony to the truth of the adage. He had not been prosperous, and had sought shelter in a London boarding-house; every night he saw cockroaches ascending his bed-curtains; every morning he complained to his very respectable landlady, and invariably received the comforting assurance that there was not a ‘black-beetle in the house.’ Still he pursued his nocturnal investigations, and he not only saw cockroaches running along the tester of the bed, but, to his great astonishment, he positively observed one of them seize a bug, and he therefore concluded, and not without some show of reason, that the cockroach ascended the curtains with this especial object, and that the more odoriferous insect is a favourite food of the major one.
“The following extract from Mr. Webster’s ‘Narrative of Foster’s Voyage,’ corroborates this recent observation, and illustrates the proverb which I have taken as my text: ‘Cockroaches, those nuisances of ships, are plentiful at St. Helena, and yet, bad as they are, they are more endurable than bugs. Previous to our arrival here in the Chanticleer we had suffered great inconvenience from the latter; but the cockroaches no sooner made their appearance than the bugs entirely disappeared. The fact is, the cockroach preys upon them, and leaves no sign or vestige of where they have been. So far, the latter is a most valuable insect.’”
So great is the annoyance and discomfort arising from these insects in Cockney households, that the author of a paper in the Daily News discusses the best means of effecting their extirpation. The writer of the article referred to avows his conviction, that the ingenious individual who shall devise the means of effectually ridding our houses of these insect pests will deserve to be ranked amongst the benefactors of mankind. The writer details the various expedients resorted to—hedgehogs, cucumber-peel, red wafers, phosphoric paste, glazed basins or pie-dishes filled with beer, or a syrup of beer and sugar, with bits of wood set up from the floor to the edge, for the creatures to run up by, and then be precipitated into the fatal lake, but believes that “none of these methods are fundamental enough for the evil,” which, so far as he is yet aware, can only be effectually cured by heating our houses by steam!
A firm, which has been established in London seven years, and which manufactures exclusively poison known to the trade as the “Phosphor Paste for the destruction of black-beetles, cockroaches, rats, mice,” &c., were kind enough to give me the following information:—
“We have now sold this vermin poison for seven years, but we have never had an application for our composition from any street-seller. We have seen, a year or two since, a man about London who used to sell beetle-wafers; but as we knew that kind of article to be entirely useless, we were not surprised to find that he did not succeed in making a living. We have not heard of him for some time, and have no doubt he is dead, or has taken up some other line of employment.
“It is a strange fact, perhaps; but we do not know anything, or scarcely anything, as to the kind of people and tradesmen who purchase our poison—to speak the truth, we do not like to make too many inquiries of our customers. Sometimes, when they have used more than their customary quantity, we have asked, casually, how it was and to what kind of business-people they disposed of it, and we have always been met with an evasive sort of answer. You see tradesmen don’t like to divulge too much; for it must be a poor kind of profession or calling that there are no secrets in; and, again, they fancy we want to know what description of trades use the most of our composition, so that we might supply them direct from ourselves.
“From this cause we have made it a rule not to inquire curiously into the matters of our customers. We are quite content to dispose of the quantity we do, for we employ six travellers to call on chemists and oilmen for the town trade, and four for the country.
“The other day an elderly lady from High-street, Camden Town, called upon us: she stated that she was overrun with black-beetles, and wished to buy some of our paste from ourselves, for she said she always found things better if you purchased them of the maker, as you were sure to get them stronger, and by that means avoided the adulteration of the shopkeepers. But as we have said we would not supply a single box to any one, not wishing to give our agents any cause for complaint, we were obliged to refuse to sell to the old lady.
“We don’t care to say how many boxes we sell in the year; but we can tell you, sir, that we sell more for beetle poisoning in the summer than in the winter, as a matter of course. When we find that a particular district uses almost an equal quantity all the year round, we make sure that that is a rat district; for where there is not the heat of summer to breed beetles, it must follow that the people wish to get rid of rats.
“Brixton, Hackney, Ball’s Pond, and Lower Road, Islington, are the places that use most of our paste, those districts lying low, and being consequently damp. Camden Town, though it is in a high situation, is very much infested with beetles; it is a clayey soil, you understand, which retains moisture, and will not allow it to filter through like gravel. This is why in some very low districts, where the houses are built on gravel, we sell scarcely any of our paste.
“As the farmers say, a good fruit year is a good fly year; so we say, a good dull, wet summer, is a good beetle summer; and this has been a very fertile year, and we only hope it will be as good next year.
“We don’t believe in rat-destroyers; they profess to kill with weasels and a lot of things, and sometimes even say they can charm them away. Captains of vessels, when they arrive in the docks, will employ these people; and, as we say, they generally use our composition, but as long as their vessels are cleared of the vermin, they don’t care to know how it is done. A man who drives about in a cart, and does a great business in this way, we have reason to believe uses a great quantity of our Phosphor Paste. He comes from somewhere down the East-end or Whitechapel way.
“Our prices are too high for the street-sellers. Your street-seller can only afford to sell an article made by a person in but a very little better position than himself. Even our small boxes cost at the trade price two shillings a dozen, and when sold will only produce three shillings; so you can imagine the profit is not enough for the itinerant vendor.
“Bakers don’t use much of our paste, for they seem to think it no use to destroy the vermin—beetles and bakers’ shops generally go together.”
The house-cricket may perhaps be deemed a still more annoying insect than the common cockroach, adding an incessant noise to its ravages. Though it may not be unpleasant to hear for a short time “the cricket chirrup in the hearth,” so constant a din every evening must greatly interrupt comfort and conversation.
These garrulous animals, which live in a kind of artificial torrid zone, are very thirsty souls, and are frequently found drowned in pans of water, milk, broth, and the like. Whatever is moist, even stockings or linen hung out to dry, is to them a bonne bouche; they will eat the skimmings of pots, yeast, crumbs of bread, and even salt, or anything within their reach. Sometimes they are so abundant in houses as to become absolute pests, flying into the candles and even into people’s faces.—(Kirby and Spence’s Ent. i. 206, 7.)
The house-cricket (Acheta domestica) is well known for its habit of picking out the mortar of ovens and fire-places, where it not only enjoys warmth, but can procure abundance of food. It is usually supposed that it feeds on bread. M. Latreille says it only eats insects, and it certainly thrives well in houses infested by the cockroach; but we have also known it eat and destroy lamb’s-wool stockings, and other woollen stuffs, hung near a fire to dry. Although the food of crickets consists chiefly of vegetable substances, they exhibit a propensity to carnivorous habits. The house-cricket thrives best in the vicinity of a baker’s oven, where there are plenty of bread crumbs.
Mouffet marvels at its extreme lankness, inasmuch as there is not “found in the belly any superfluity at all, although it feed on the moisture of flesh and fat of broth, to which, either poured out or reserved, it runs in the night; yea, although it feed on bread, yet is the belly always lank and void of superfluity.”—(Theatre of Insects, p. 96.)
White of Selborne, again, says, “as one would suppose, from the burning atmosphere which they inhabit, they are a thirsty race, and show a great propensity for liquids, being frequently found dead in pans of water, milk, broth, or the like. Whatever is moist they are fond of, and therefore they often gnaw holes in wet woollen stockings and aprons that are hung to the fire. These crickets are not only very thirsty, but very voracious; for they will eat the scummings of pots, yeast, bread, and kitchen offal, or sweepings of almost every description.”—(Nat. Hist. of Selborne.)
The cricket is evidently not fond of hard labour, but prefers those places where the mortar is already loosened, or at least is new, soft, and easily scooped out; and in this way it will dig covert channels from room to room. In summer, crickets often make excursions from the house to the neighbouring fields, and dwell in the crevices of rubbish, or the cracks made in the ground by dry weather, where they chirp as merrily as in the snuggest chimney-corner. Whether they ever dig retreats in such circumstances we have not ascertained, though it is not improbable they may do so for the purpose of making nests.
“Those,” says Mr. Gough of Manchester, “who have attended to the manners of the hearth-cricket, know that it passes the hottest part of the summer in sunny situations, concealed in the crevices of walls and heaps of rubbish. It quits its summer abode about the end of August, and fixes its residence by the fireside of kitchens or cottages, where it multiplies its species, and is as merry at Christmas as other insects in the dog-days. Thus do the comforts of a warm hearth afford the cricket a safe refuge, not from death, but from temporary torpidity, though it can support this for a long time, when deprived by accident of artificial warmth.
“I came to a knowledge of this fact,” continues Mr. Gough, “by planting a colony of these insects in a kitchen, where a constant fire was kept through the summer, but which is discontinued from November till June, with the exception of a day once in six or eight weeks. The crickets were brought from a distance, and let go in this room, in the beginning of September, 1806; here they increased considerably in the course of two months, but were not heard or seen after the fire was removed. Their disappearance led me to conclude that the cold had killed them; but in this I was mistaken; for a brisk fire being kept up for a whole day in the winter, the warmth of it invited my colony from their hiding-place, but not before the evening; after which they continued to skip about and chirp the greater part of the following day, when they again disappeared—being compelled, by the returning cold, to take refuge in their former retreats. They left the chimney-corner on the 25th of May, 1807, after a fit of very hot weather, and revisited their winter residence on the 31st of August. Here they spent the summer merely, and at present (January, 1808) lie torpid in the crevices of the chimney, with the exception of those days on which they are recalled to a temporary existence by the comforts of the fire.”—(Reeve, Essay on the Torpidity of Animals, p. 84.)
M. Bery St. Vincent tells us that the Spaniards are so fond of crickets that they keep them in cages like singing-birds.—(Dict. Classique d’Hist. Nat. Art., Grillon. Rennie’s Insect Architecture, 4th edit. p. 242.)
Associated as is the chirping song of the cricket family of insects with the snug chimney-corner, or the sunshine of summer, it affords a pleasure which certainly does not arise from the intrinsic quality of its music. “Sounds,” says White, “do not always give us pleasure according to their sweetness and melody; nor do harsh sounds always displease. Thus, the shrilling of the field-cricket (Acheta campestris), though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer ideas of everything that is rural, verdurous, and joyous.”—(Nat. Hist. of Selborne, ii. 73.)
This circumstance, no doubt, causes the Spaniards to keep them in cages, as we do singing-birds. White tells us that, if supplied with moistened leaves, they will sing as merrily and loud in a paper cage as in the fields; but he did not succeed in planting a colony of them in the terrace of his garden, though he bored holes for them in the turf to save them the labour of digging.
The hearth-cricket, again, though we hear it occasionally in the hedge-banks in summer, prefers the warmth of an oven or a good fire, and thence, residing as it were always in the torrid zone, is ever alert and merry—a good Christmas fire being to it what the heat of the dog-days is to others.
Though crickets are frequently heard by day, yet their natural time of motion is only in the night. As soon as darkness prevails the chirping increases, whilst the hearth-crickets come running forth, and are often to be seen in great numbers, from the size of a flea to that of their full stature.
Like the field-cricket, the hearth-crickets are sometimes kept for their music; and the learned Scaliger took so great a fancy to their song, that he was accustomed to keep them in a box in his study. It is reported that in some parts of Africa they are kept and fed in a kind of iron oven, and sold to the natives, who like their chirp, and think it is a good soporific.—(Mouffet, Theat. Insect. 136.)
Milton, too, chose for his contemplative pleasures a spot where crickets resorted:—
Rennie, in his Insect Miscellanies, says, “We have been as unsuccessful in transplanting the hearth-cricket as White was with the field-crickets. In two different houses we have repeatedly introduced crickets, but could not prevail on them to stay. One of our trials, indeed, was made in summer, with insects brought from a garden-wall, and it is probable they thought the kitchen fire-side too hot at that season.”—(p. 82.)
The so-called chirp of the cricket is a vulgar error. The instrument (for so it may be styled) upon which the male cricket plays (the female is mute) consists of strong nervures or rough strings in the wing-cases, by the friction of which against each other a sound is produced and communicated to the membranes stretched between them, in the same manner as the vibrations caused by the friction of the finger upon the tambourine are diffused over its surface. It is erroneously stated in a popular work, that “the organ is a membrane, which in contracting, by means of a muscle and tendon placed under the wings of the insect, folds down somewhat like a fan;” and this, being “always dry, yields by its motion a sharp piercing sound.”—(Bing, Anim. Biog. iv. 6th edit. Rennie’s Insect Miscellanies, p. 62.)