If crickets are put into a box together, they devour each other. This does not prove conclusively that they are carnivorous, for there are many species, eating nothing but vegetables, which would destroy each other in a similar case. Some authors say that these insects are always thirsty, for they are often to be found drowned in the vessels containing any kind of liquid. Everything damp is to their taste. It is for this reason that they sometimes make holes in wet clothes, which are hung up before the fire to dry. They inhabit, by preference, houses newly built; for the mortar, being still damp, allows them to hollow out their dwelling-places with greater ease.
Fig. 304.—Field Cricket (Gryllus campestris).
The habits of the House Cricket (Gryllus domesticus) are nocturnal, like those of its congener of the fields. It is only at night that it leaves its retreat to seek its food. When it is exposed against its will to the light of day, it appears to be in a state of torpor. This insect reminds one of the owl, among birds, not only from its habit of avoiding the light, but also from its monotonous song, which the vulgar consider, one does not know why, a foreboding of ill-luck to the house in which it is heard. Formerly this singular prejudice was much deeper rooted than it is at present The song of the cricket has merely the object of calling the female. The Wood Cricket (Gryllus [Nemobius] sylvestris) is much smaller than the above, and is met with in great numbers in the woods, where its leaps sometimes produce the noise of drops of rain.
Fig. 305.—Mole Cricket (Gryllo-talpa vulgaris).
The female crickets have a long egg-layer, or ovipositor, with which they deposit their eggs, of which each one lays, towards the middle of the summer, about three hundred, in the cracks and crevices of the soil. The larvæ pass the winter in that state, and do not become pupæ and perfect insects till the following summer.
Mouffet relates that, in certain regions of Africa, the crickets are objects of commerce. They are brought up in little cages, as we do Canary birds, and sold to the inhabitants, who like to hear their amorous chant. It is said that some tribes eat these insects. In France they are sought after as baits for fishing, and are used also in menageries for feeding small reptiles. Next to Gryllus come the genera Œcanthus, insects of the south of Europe, which live on plants, and which one often sees fluttering about flowers; Sphæria, which live in ant-hills; Platydactylus; and, lastly, the Mole Cricket (Gryllo-talpa), whose habits deserve attention for a while.