Page:White - The natural history of Selborne, and the naturalist's calendar, 1879.djvu/435

Rh hearth swarms with young crickets, and young blattæ molendinariæ of all sizes, from the most minute growth to their full proportions. They seem to live in a friendly manner together, and not to prey the one on the other.

August 1792. After the destruction of many thousands of blattæ molendinariæ, we find that at intervals a fresh detachment of old ones arrives, and particularly during this hot season; for the windows being left open in the evenings, the males come flying in at the casements from the neighbouring houses, which swarm with them. How the females, that seem to have no perfect wings that they can use, can contrive to get from house to house, does not so readily appear. These, like many insects, when they find their present abodes overstocked, have powers of migrating to fresh quarters. Since the blattæ have been so much kept under, the crickets have greatly increased in number.—.

November. After the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen hearth swarms with minute crickets not so large as fleas, which must have been lately hatched. So that these domestic insects, cherished by the influence of a constant large fire, regard not the season of the year, but produce their young at a time when their congeners are either dead, or laid up for the winter, to pass away the uncomfortable months in the profoundest slumbers, and a state of torpidity.

When house-crickets are out, and running about in a room in the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three shrill notes, as it were for a signal to their fellows, that they may escape to their crannies and lurking holes, to avoid danger. —.

August 12th, 1775. Cimices lineares are now in high copulation on ponds and pools. The females, who vastly exceed the males