Saw a couple of flies sailing slowly about the room; they are seldom seen here in winter. The spiders, so common in the autumn, have either been killed by the cold, or lie stowed away until spring. The whole insect world is silent and invisible, save the cricket. This is the only creature of its kind heard about the house during our long winters. We have one just now living somewhere about the chimney, which sings with a very clear, spirited note, especially of an evening when the fire burns brightly. It is said that our crickets in this country are all field crickets, which have found their way into houses by accident; they seem to like their lodgings very well, for they chirrup away gayly at all seasons, even when their companions in the fields are buried deep under the snow. They do well to haunt our houses in this way, for it makes quite different creatures of them, adding another, and apparently a merry, cheerful, half to their lives. They do not seem to require the annual sleep of their companions out of doors. The true house-cricket of Europe is not found in America. Whether the voices, or rather the chirrup, of both is precisely alike, we cannot remember; probably there is not much difference, if any. It is well known that the sounds made by these little creatures are produced by playing their wing-covers; so that, in fact, they rather fiddle than sing. It is the male only who is the musician, the females are quiet.
We owe the Mice and Rats which infest our dwellings, entirely to the Old World. The common brown rat, already so numerous here, is said to have come from Asia, and only appeared in Europe about the beginning of the seventeenth century, or some two hundred and fifty years since. The English say it came over with the Hanoverian kings. The German mercenaries, the “Hessians,”
