Crickets — Part 1

(Family Gryllidae.)

These insects, commonly known as crickets, have long antennae, longer than the body, as in the Locustidae, but the tarsi are three-jointed and the ovipositor, when exserted, is spear-shaped. The hind legs are long, and the femora are swollen. Many species are wingless, but with those which have wings the tegmina, or upper wings, are deflexed on the outer edge so that they fit closely to the sides of the body. In the male sex the upper wings are frequently curiously modified so as to permit an even more elaborate musical apparatus than is the case with the Locustidae. The insects of this family are not numerous from the point of number of species, and but three distinct types are found in the group. These are the true crickets, typified by the common field cricket; the mole crickets, forms with very short wings, which are sometimes entirely absent, and with modified front legs, which superficially resemble those of a mole, and which live during their entire lives underground; and third, the so-called tree crickets, pale-colored nocturnal forms which lay their eggs in the twigs of different plants, and which sometimes are so abundant that by their egg-laying alone they do considerable damage to vineyards and to raspberry and blackberry plantations. The house cricket, or hearth cricket, Gryllus domesticus, of Europe, is not common on this continent except in Canada, but two or three species of field crickets are occasionally found in houses in this country. The common black cricket, found in grassy pasture lands or fields, lives in burrows under the ground, issues sometimes in the day, but more usually at night to feed, and takes blades of grass back into its burrow. The eggs are laid in the autumn, usually in the ground, and are hatched the following summer. The mole crickets live always under the ground and feed upon the tender roots of forage plants, while the tree crickets are, as their name suggests, arboreal in their habits.

The crickets are the most musical of all insects. Even the male mole cricket consoles himself by fiddling, and warms the heart of his mate by playing a tune which is not cheerful enough for a household ditty, but, to our ears, uneducated in the orthopteran musical culture, sounds more like a lament of his sad subterranean fate. It has been reduced to scale by Scudder as follows:

The house cricket, or the cricket of the hearth, plays a more cheerful tune, or, at all events, it is supposed to mean comfort and a warm fireside and a steaming kettle. It is thus not the music but the association of ideas which produces the pleasing effect. Cowper expressed it perfectly when he wrote:

"Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh,

Yet, heard in scenes where peace forever reigns,

And only there, please highly for their sake."

The name cricket comes from this sound, and is derived from the imitative French popular name, "cricri," and similar descriptive names are applied to it in many foreign tongues. The common field crickets (Gryllus neglectus, for example) are often very musical at night. Scudder says that sometimes the notes are produced as slowly as two per second, but that they may be twice as rapid. The note is a shrill one, and is said to be pitched at e natural, two octaves above middle c. It is recorded as follows:

Perhaps the commonest night song, however, is that of the snowy tree cricket (OEcanthus niveus et al). The notes of our three or four species of snowy tree crickets vary much in intensity. There is a distinct relation between the temperature and the number of notes per minute. Professor Dolbear has reduced this to a mathematical formula. He says:

Let T=temperture in degrees Fahrenheit; N=number of chirps per minute. Then T=50+N4--??4deg./4. This would give 100 chirps for 65 degrees Fahrenheit.

This formula has been tested in Massachusetts by Dr. Robert Edes and Mr. Walter Faxon, who find that from actual records the temperature is about 63 degrees to 100 chirps, with an error of variation of one degree or less in four-fifths of the cases. The day song is annotated by Mr. Scudder as follows, and he states that it is a nearly uniform, equally-sustained trill lasting from two or three seconds to a minute or two. The insect, however, "often begins its note at a different pitch from the normal one--fourth f above middle c--as if it required a little practice to attain it."

The song of OEcanthus niveus is by far the most familiar one. Riley gave the best description of it when he said that it "is intermittent, resembling a shrill `re-teat, re-teat, re-teat,' with a slight pause between each." Scudder reminds us that Burroughs has called this noise a "rhythmic beat;" that Thoreau called it "slumbrous breathing," and that Hawthorne describes it as "audible stillness," and that he says, "if moonlight could be heard it would sound like that." Fitch says that the noise made by these crickets is an invitation to "treat--treat--treat."