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.)
“Sounds inharmonious in themselves, and harsh,
Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever reigns,
And only there, please highly for their sake.”
COWPER, _Task_, Book I.
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:--
“Where glowing embers through the room
Teach light to counterfeit a gloom,
Far from all resort of mirth,
See the cricket on the hearth.”--_Il Penseroso._
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.)