They seem to be most inclined to breed in beech; hence beech will not make lasting utensils, or furniture. If their eggs are deposited on the surface, frequent rubbings will preserve wooden furniture3.

BLATTA ORIENTALIS-COCKROACH.

A NEIGHBOUR complained to me that her house was overrun with a kind of black beetle, or, as she expressed herself, with a kind of black bob, which swarmed in her kitchen when they get up in a morning before daybreak.

Soon after this account, I observed an unusual insect in one of my dark chimney closets, and find since, that in the night they swarm also in my kitchen. On examination, I soon ascertained the species to be the Blatta Orientalis of Linnæus, and the Blatta molendinaria of Mouffet. The male is winged; the female is not, but shows somewhat like the rudiments of wings, as if in the pupa state.

These insects belonged originally to the warmer parts of America, and were conveyed from thence by shipping to the East Indies; and by means of commerce begin to prevail in the more northern parts of Europe, as Russia, Sweden, &c. How long they have abounded in England I cannot say; but have never observed them in my house till lately.

They love warmth, and haunt chimney closets, and the backs of ovens. Poda says that these and house crickets will not associate together; but he is mistaken in that assertion, as Linnæus suspected he was. They are altogether night insects (lucifugæ), never coming forth till the rooms are dark and still, and escaping

The Ptilinus pectinicornis, FABR., is by no means the only insect that is destructive to furniture. Various species of Anobium also perforate it in all directions. Linnæus's chairs were bored through and destroyed by An. pertinax; and the Rev. Mr. Kirby has had his chairs, his pictureframes, and the floor of his chamber eaten in every direction by the An. striatum: the last named beetle attacks any furniture, not even abstaining altogether from mahogany.-E. T. B.

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away nimbly at the approach of a candle. Their antennæ are remarkably long, slender, and flexile.

October, 1790. After the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen hearth swarms with young crickets, and young Blatte molendinaria of all sizes, from the most minute growth to their full proportions. They seem to live in a friendly manner together, and not to prey the one on the other.

August, 1792. After the destruction of many thousands of Blatte molendinaria, we find that at intervals a fresh detachment of old ones arrives; and particularly during this hot season: for the windows being left open in the evenings, the males come flying in at the casements from the neighbouring houses, which swarm with them. How the females, that seem to have no perfect wings that they can use, can contrive to get from house to house, does not so readily appear. These, like many insects, when they find their present abodes overstocked, have powers of migrating to fresh quarters. Since the Blatta have been so much kept under, the crickets have greatly increased in number.

GRYLLUS DOMESTICUS-HOUSE CRICKET.

NOVEMBER. After the servants are gone to bed, the kitchen hearth swarms with minute crickets not so large as fleas, which must have been lately hatched. So that these domestic insects, cherished by the influence of a constant large fire, regard not the season of the year, but produce their young at a time when their congeners are either dead, or laid up for the winter, to pass away the uncomfortable months in the profoundest slumbers, and a state of torpidity.

When house crickets are out, and running about in a room in the night, if surprised by a candle, they give two or three shrill notes, as it were for a signal to their fellows, that they may escape to their crannies and lurking holes, to avoid danger.

CIMEX LINEARIS.

AUGUST 12, 1775. Cimices lineares are now eagerly pairing on ponds and pools. The females, who vastly exceed the males in bulk, dart and shoot along on the surface of the water with the males on their backs. When a female chooses to be disengaged, she rears, and jumps, and plunges, like an unruly colt; the lover thus dismounted, soon finds a new mate. The females afterwards retire to another part of the lake, perhaps to deposit their fœtus in quiet; hence the sexes are found separate, except in the pairing season. From the multitude of minute young of all gradations of sizes, these insects seem without doubt to be viviparous?.

RANATRA LINEARIS,

6 [Ranatra linearis, FABR.]

7 The egg of the long water-bug has been sufficiently known for many years. It is armed at one end by two bristles, and is inserted into the stem of an aquatic plant, generally of a club rush, in which it is so deeply immersed by the aid of the lengthened ovipositor of the insect, as to be entirely hidden from view; the bristles alone projecting from the place of concealment. The object of this curious arrangement is among the most beautiful and beneficent of the provisions of nature. While a recep

PHALENA QUERCUS.

Most of our oaks are naked of leaves, and even the Holt in general, having been ravaged by the caterpillars of a small Phalana which is of a pale yellow colour. These insects, though a feeble race, yet, from their infinite numbers, are of wonderful effect, being able to destroy the foliage of whole forests and districts. At this season they leave their aurelia, and issue forth in their fly state, swarming and covering the trees and hedges.

In a field at Greatham, I saw a flight of swifts busied in catching their prey near the ground; and found they were hawking after these Phalana. The aurelia of this moth is shining and as black as jet; and lies wrapped up in a leaf of the tree, which is rolled round it, and secured at the ends by a web, to prevent the maggot from falling out®.

tacle is allotted to the egg in a soft and moist nidus, sheltered from the attacks of its enemies, an exit is at the same time secured for the little larva about to be hatched from it, which will only have to advance itself to separate the projecting bristles, and consequently to spread, sufficiently wide to allow of its passage between them, the ridges of the culm which have been, by their intervention, prevented from uniting after the wound inflicted on them: a union which would have effectually enclosed and buried the included egg with its larva, unfurnished as the latter apparently is with any means of forcing for itself a passage. The egg of the much more common flat water-bug, Nepa cinerea, LINN., is still more extensively furnished with the curious appendages adverted to: it has no less than seven bristles, forming a crown, as it were, round one of its extremities.-E. T. B.

8 I suspect that the insect here meant is not the Phalana Quercus, but the Phalana viridata, concerning which, I find the following note in my Naturalist's Calendar for the year 1785:

About this time, and for a few days last past, I observed the leaves of almost all the oak trees in Denn Copse to be eaten and destroyed, and, on examining more narrowly, saw an infinite number of small beautiful pale green moths flying about the trees; the leaves of which that were not quite destroyed were curled up, and withinside were the exuviæ or remains of the chrysalis, from whence I suppose the moths had issued, and whose caterpillar had eaten the leaves.-MARKWICK.

It is by no means improbable, notwithstanding the differences in their

EPHEMERA CAUDA TRISETA-MAY FLY.

JUNE 10, 1771. Myriads of May flies appear for the first time on the Alresford stream. The air was crowded with them, and the surface of the water covered. Large trouts sucked them in as they lay struggling on the

descriptions, that Markwick may have correctly indicated the insect observed by White: for I am not aware that the caterpillar of any small moth, except the Tortrix viridana, denudes the oak of its foliage to so great an extent as that noticed in the text. White's insect evidently belonged to the family of Tortricidæ, or leaf-rollers, as they may be called; as is shown by its pupa being wrapped up in a leaf, which was rolled round it, and secured at the ends by a web to prevent it from falling out. It consequently could not have been the Phalana Quercûs, LINN., a large moth belonging to the Bombycidæ, the pupa of which is enveloped in a cocoon of considerable size, as is seen in that of the silk-worm, perhaps the most familiar instance of the family. The Phalana quercana is a leaf-roller : but this could scarcely have been White's moth, as its deep rufous-yellow wings would not have appeared to him of a pale yellow colour; and I have besides no reason for believing that it ever abounds on the oak so excessively as to strip the trees of their leaves. The latter remark would also apply to the Tortrices of the genus Dictyopteryx of Mr. Stephens; some one of which may, however, possibly have been the insect meant. But great ravages are unquestionably committed by the moth described by Markwick, known to aurelians by the name of the pea-green. Haworth's remarks on it, in his Lepidoptera Britannica, are confirmatory of Markwick's observations, and are worthy of perusal, not merely on that account, but as they include also an exposition of one of those admirable provisions of nature by which excess in any single department is counteracted.

"In most seasons," Mr. Haworth says, "this insect occurs in greater abundance than any other of the genus; but a few summers since they were produced in such amazing quantities about London, and also in Norfolk, as threatened annihilation to our oaks; and must eventually have really destroyed them, had not nature, by one of her admirable efforts, cured the calamity in her own way: by simply starving the Tortrices. The oaks were defoliated by their voracious larvæ; not a perfect leaf, nay hardly the rib of one, was left; in consequence of which myriads of the caterpillars perished through want and hunger, or failed, through weakness, to surmount the difficulties of pupation. So that very few eggs were deposited for the following season; which, as I predicted, was not overburthened with an increase of the Tortrix, as many expected, and which would have ruined the oaks: but, with such an astonishing diminution, that hardly a single specimen was to be found where, but the year before, thousands swarmed on every oak."-E. T. B.