doe but touch the amygdals or almonds of the throat, with the hand wherewith he hath bruised or crushed the said Criquet, it will appease the inflamation thereof.”[298] Again, “The Cricket digged up and applied to the plase, earth and all where it lay, is very good for the ears. Nigridius,” continues Pliny, “attributeth many properties to this poore creature, and esteemeth it not a little: but the Magicians much more by a faire deale: and why so? Forsooth because it goeth, as it were, reculing backward, it pierceth and boreth a hole into the ground, and never ceaseth all night long to creake very shrill.
“The manner of hunting and catching them is this, They take a flie and tie it above the middest at the end of a long haire of one’s head, and so put the said flie into the mouth of the Cricquet’s hole; but first they blow the dust away with their mouth, for fear lest the flie should hide herself therein; the Cricket spies the sillie flie, seaseth upon her presently and claspeth her round, and so they are both drawne foorth together by the said haire.”[299]
At the present time, children in France practice the same method of capturing Crickets for amusement; substituting, however, an ant for the “sillie flie,” and a long straw for “the haire of one’s head.” Hence comes the common proverb in France, il est sot comme un grillon. A ruse for capturing the larva of the Cicindela, now commonly practiced by entomologists, is founded on the same principle.
Pliny further says: “The Cricquets above rehearsed, either reduced into a liniment, or else bound too, whole as they be, cureth the accident of the lap of the eare, wounds, contusions, bruises,” etc.[300]
Dr. James, quoting Schroder and Dale, says: “The ashes of the Cricket (Gryllus domesticus) exhibited, are said to be diuretic; the expressed juice, dropped into the eyes, is a remedy for weakness of the sight, and alleviates disorders of the tonsils, if rubbed on them.”[301]
The English name Cricket, the French Cri-cri, the Dutch Krekel, and the Welsh Cricell and Cricella, are evidently derived from the creak-ing sounds of these insects.
Gryllidæ—Grasshoppers.
Mr. Hughes, after describing an ash-colored Grasshopper (which may be his ash-colored cricket before mentioned),[302] remarks that the superstitious of the inhabitants of Barbados are very apprehensive of some approaching illness to the family, whenever this insect flies into their houses in the evening or in the night.[303]
Athenæus tells us the ancient Greeks used to eat the common Grasshopper and the Monkey-grasshopper as provocatives of the appetite. Aristophanes says:
How can you, in God’s name, like Grasshoppers,