The cricket belongs to the same family as the grasshopper and the locust, and all three are distinguished by having four wings, with the first pair leathery throughout, overlapping at the edges only, and concealing the second pair, which are folded lengthwise.
There are three descriptions of cricket common in Great Britain—the house-cricket, the field-cricket, and the mole-cricket; of these the two first are very similar, but that the former is of a somewhat yellow shade, and the latter rather brown. Their heads are very large in proportion to their bodies, and are round. They are furnished with two large eyes and three small ones, of a light yellow color, placed rather high in their heads. The female has a hard, long spine at the extremity of her body, thick at the end, and composed of two sheaths, which contain two laminæ; this implement is made use of by the cricket to enable her to sink and deposit her eggs in the ground. Their hinder feet are much longer than the others, and serve them to leap. Unlike mice, crickets are oftenest to be found in new houses, as they like the damp, soft mortar, which saves them much trouble, when they feel inclined to burrow and mine between the joints of the bricks or stones, and to open communications from one room to another. They are very fond of warmth, and their favorite place of resort is by the kitchen fire. In the warm, long days of summer, however, they often venture out, and appear to enjoy the heat of the mid-day sun, as may be supposed from the heated atmosphere they inhabit. Crickets are a thirsty race, and, indeed, are so anxious to satisfy their inclination, that they are constantly found drowned in pans of water, milk, &c. They will even destroy damp clothes for the sake of their moisture, and woe be to the wet woolen stockings or aprons hung to dry within their reach. But the cricket is hungry as well as thirsty, and will eat voraciously any crumbs of bread, scummings of pots, &c., which happen to fall in their way.
Crickets are, in general, very inactive insects, and seldom use their wings, except when they are about to migrate from one habitation to another. The time they generally select for an excursion of this kind is the dusk of a summer evening, when they fly out of the windows, and over the neighboring roofs, no one knows whither; and this habit will account for the sudden manner in which they often disappear from an old haunt, as well as for their equally mysterious appearance in a new one—why they left and why they came being equally unaccountable. When flying, they move in wavelike curves, like woodpeckers, opening and shutting their wings at every stroke; they are, therefore, always either rising or falling.
They often increase to such a degree as to become a perfect nuisance in a house, and then they have to be destroyed, either by gunpowder being discharged into their haunts, or else by drowning, like wasps. Crickets are not fond of light; and on a candle being brought into a room where they are running about, they will just give two or three shrill chirps, as if to warn their companions of impending danger, and then quickly retreat to their lurking-holes for safety. Many strange ideas are entertained concerning these insects. Some imagine that they bring good luck to any house where they take up their abode, and will not on any account allow them to be killed. It is imagined, too, that they can prognosticate events, such as the death of a near relative, or the return of an absent lover. In Spain, crickets are held in such estimation, that they are kept in cages like birds.
The field-cricket is such a shy and timid insect, that it is exceedingly difficult to make its acquaintance, as it cautiously rejects all advances, and prudently retires backward into its burrow, where it remains until it fancies that all danger is over. In France, children amuse themselves by hunting the field-cricket. This they do by putting into its hole an ant, secured by a long hair; and, as they slowly draw it out again, it is always followed by the hapless cricket, which ventures out to know the reason of this unwarrantable intrusion into its domicile. But Pliny tells us of a more easy way of capturing them. He says, that, if we thrust a long slender piece of stick into its burrow, the insect would immediately get on it for the purpose of discovering the cause of the disturbance. From this fact arose the old proverb, "stultior grillo," or "more foolish than a cricket," applied to any one who upon light grounds provokes his enemy, and falls into the snare laid to entrap him.
It is strange that although the field-cricket is furnished with a curious apparatus of wings, and provided with long legs behind, and brawny thighs for leaping, like grasshoppers, yet they never make use of them when we would imagine they were most wanted, but suffer themselves to be captured without making any struggle for liberty, crawling along in a dull, shiftless manner. They satisfy their hunger with such herbs as happen to grow near their burrows, and rarely stir from home. They generally sit at the entrance of their caverns, and chirp away night and day, from the middle of May to the middle of July. And who does not love their pleasant song, shrill though it be? But harsh sounds are not necessarily disagreeable. Much depends on the association of ideas; and the summer song of the field-cricket recalls to us our childhood's days, long since, it may be, gone by, and fills our mind with happy thoughts of our wanderings in quest of them, when all nature appeared bright, and gay, and joyous. In very hot weather, the field-cricket is most vigorous, and then the hills echo their notes, while the evening breeze carries them to a great distance, making their melody heard in the stilly hours of night.
About the 10th of March, the crickets appear at the mouth of their cells, which they then open for the approaching summer. At that time they are all in the pupa state, and have only the rudiments of wings, which lie under a skin or coat, which must be cast off before the insect arrives at maturity. This circumstance makes naturalists believe that they seldom live a second year. They cast their skins in April, and great quantities of them may be seen at the mouth of their cells. Their eggs are long and narrow, of a yellowish color, and covered with a very tough skin. The male field-cricket has a golden stripe across the shoulders of its shining coat. The female is of a brighter color, and, besides this, may be distinguished by the long, sword-shaped instrument for laying her eggs beforementioned.
They always live singly, male or female, as the case may be; and when the males meet they fight fiercely. Once, when Mr. White of Selborne placed some in a stone wall, where he was anxious to have them settle, although they appeared distressed at being removed to a new habitation, yet the first that got possession of the chinks, seized any that intruded on them, with their powerful jaws, furnished with a row of serrated fangs, formed something like the shears of a lobster's claw. If field-crickets are confined in a paper cage, placed in the sun, and supplied with plants well moistened with water, they will thrive as well as in their more natural resorts, and become so merry and noisy as to be troublesome to any one sitting in the same room. Should the plants become dry, they will soon die.
The mole-cricket, so called from the similarity of its habits to those of the mole, is an ugly, but very curious-looking insect. Unlike the house and field-cricket, its head is very small, and of an oblong form. But the chief peculiarity of the insect is its two forefeet or legs—screws, as they are sometimes not very inappropriately called. They are very large and flat, ending outwardly in four large serrated claws, and inwardly with only two. The four claws point somewhat obliquely outward, that being the direction in which the insect digs, throwing out the earth on each side of its course. How wonderfully does He, who "preserves both man and beast," provide for the wants of each insect! The breast of the field-cricket is formed of a thick, hard, horny substance, which is further strengthened within by a double framework of strong gristle, in front of the extremities of which the shoulder-blades of the arm are firmly pointed—a structure evidently intended to prevent the breast from being injured by the powerful muscular motion of the arms in digging.
While the house and field-cricket rejoice in dry and sunny banks, or revel in the glowing heat of a kitchen-hearth, the mole-cricket haunts damp meadows and marshy grounds by the river banks, where they perform all their most curious functions. They burrow and work under ground, like the mole, but raise a ridge as they proceed, instead of throwing up hillocks. They are very fond of taking up their abode in gardens situated near canals, but they are always unwelcome visitors, as they disturb the walks in making their subterranean passages, and besides this, they devour whole beds of cabbage, legumes, and other vegetables, and sometimes even commit great ravages among flowers.