LIBRARY

100 COLLEGE ENTOMOLOGY
(Fabricius), a black species with brown wings, measuring about 20 mm. when
fully grown, is the common species. In Europe, northern Africa, and western
Asia, the house cricket, Gryllus domesticus Linnreus, is the "cricket on the
hearth" of literature. C. frontalis Fieber is another common species in Germany,
Austria, and southern Europe. The desert cricket, G. desertus Pallas,
also occupies southern Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. The Spanish
cricket, G. hispanicus Rambur, is confined to the Spanish Peninsula, Madeira,
the Canary Islands, and South Africa. The shell cricket, G. testaceous Walker,
lives in China, Japan, India, Ceylon, Straits Settlements, and the Philippines.
The Chinese cricket, C. chinensis Weber, has a much wider distribution that
extends from China through southern Asia and southern Europe, Africa, and
Madagascar. The Oceanic cricket, G. oceanicus Le GuiIlou, occurs in Japan,
Borneo, the South Pacific Islands, and Hawaii.
Three other crickets might be mentioned: the shrill house cricket, Brachytrypes
megacephalus Lefebure, inhabiting Sicily and North Africa, whose shrill note
may be heard a mile; the European field cricket, Liogryllus campestris (Linnreus),
of Europe, North Africa, and western Asia; and the two-spotted cricket,
Acheta bimaculaia (De Geer), of southern -Europe, Asia, and Africa.
The Chinese and Japanese are very fond of singing crickets. They cage and
make as much of these insects as other people do of songbirds. Male crickets
are naturally pugnacious and fight freely among themselves. This natural combativeness
has been taken advantage of and even developed through selection
and rearing by the Chinese who for ages have promoted cricket fights. Crickets
are reared in earthen jars and kept in small natural gourds or very expensive
carved ones or in minute cells and cages. Great sums of money have been
expended for especially good fighters. The average price has ranged from
$50.00 to $100.00 apiece. It is stated that a famous fighting cricket named
"Ghengis Khan" of Canton won fights with as much as $90,000 at stake. The
fighting crickets were of the ordinary field-cricket type.
Among those employed in China for singing are: the besprinkled cricket,
Gryllus conspersus Schaum, the mitred cricket, G. mitratus Burmeister, and the
broad-faced cricket, Loxoblemmus taicoun Saussure, known as the watchman's
rattle. The mitred cricket has a call like the click of the weaver's shuttle and
is therefore called tsu-chi, which means "one who stimulates spinning" (Laufer,
1927).
The tree crickets are among the finest insect musicians. Everywhere their
song is heard on warm summer evenings and on overcast days. The intervals
between notes are dependent upon temperature, and specialists may accurately
determine the degrees of temperature by counting the rapidity of the stridulations.
In China and Japan these insects are favored as household songsters.
The most famous of these is the black tree cricket, Homceogryllus japonicus
Baan, describ'ed as appearing like a large black watermelon seed, 19 mm. long.
It occurs in China, Japan, India, and lava. In China it is called kin chung or
golden bell because the notes of the males are like those of the tiny bells. In
Japan also it is called the bell insect, and its notes are likened to those of the