Save the Cricket on the hearth.[290]
The learned Scaliger is said to have been particularly delighted with the chirping of these animals, and was accustomed to keep them in a box for his amusement in his study.[291]
Mrs. Taylor, the writer of a very interesting series of papers on insects for Harper’s Magazine, relates that in her travels through Wales, she obtained several House-crickets in the old Castle of Caernarvon. These she carried with her, in her journeyings to and fro over the Kingdom, for several years, and at last brought them to this country, where they were liberated in the snuggest corner of a Southern hearth. Again a wanderer for many years, she went back to the old house to see how her chirping friends were coming on, but, alas! she was told by the then residents, with the utmost calmness, “they had had great difficulty in scalding them out, and they hoped there was not one left on the premises!”[292]
In certain countries of Africa, Crickets are reported to constitute an article of commerce. Some persons rear them, feed them in a kind of iron oven, and sell them to the natives, who are very fond of their music, thinking it induces sleep.[293]
De Pauw finds some traces of the Egyptian worship of the Scarabæus in this fondness for the music of the “holy Crickets,” as he calls them, of Madagascar! By the rearing of which insects, he tells us, the Africans make a living, and the rich would think themselves at enmity with heaven, if they did not preserve whole swarms in ovens constructed expressly for that purpose.[294]
The youth of Germany, Jaeger says, are extremely fond of Field-crickets, so much so, that there is scarcely a boy to be seen who has not several small boxes made expressly for keeping these insects in. So much delighted are they, too, with their music, that they carry these boxes of Crickets into their bed-rooms at night, and are soothed to sleep with their chirping lullaby.[295]
On the contrary, others, as has been before mentioned, think there is something ominous and melancholy in the Cricket’s cry, and use every endeavor to banish this insect from their houses. “Lidelius tells us,” says Goldsmith, “of a woman who was very much incommoded by Crickets, and tried, but in vain, every method of banishing them from her house. She at last accidentally succeeded; for having one day invited several guests to her house, where there was a wedding, in order to increase the festivity of the entertainment, she procured drums and trumpets to entertain them. The noise of these was so much greater than what the little animals were accustomed to, that they instantly forsook their situation, and were never heard in that mansion more.”[296] Like many other noisy persons, Crickets like to hear nobody louder than themselves.
In the Island of Sumatra, Capt. Stuart tells me, a black Cricket is looked upon with great respect, amounting almost to adoration. It is deemed a grievous sin to kill it.
Baskets full of Field-crickets, Lopes de Gomara says, were found among the provisions of the Indians of Jamaica when they were first discovered.[297]
“The Criquet called Gryllus,” says Pliny in the words of Holland, “doth mitigat catarrhs and all asperities offending the throat, if the same bee rubbed therewith: also if a man