Note 12 — PETER KALM’s TRAVELS.

Gryllus campestris, or the field-cricket: They lay ten inches deep; they were quite torpid, but as soon as they came into a warm place they revived and were quite lively. In summer I have found these crickets in great plenty in all parts of North America where I have been. They leaped about on the fields, and made a noise like that of our common house-crickets, so that it would be difficult to distinguish them by their chirping. They sometimes make so great a noise, that it causes pain in the ears, and even two people cannot understand each other. In such places where the rattle-snakes live, the field-crickets are very disagreeable, and in a manner dangerous, for their violent chirping prevents the warning, which that horrid snake gives with its rattle, from reaching the ear, and thus deprives one of the means of avoiding it. I have already mentioned that they likewise winter sometimes in chimnies12. Here they ly all winter in the ground, but at the beginning of March, as the air was grown warm, they came out of their holes, and began their music, though at first it was but very faint and rarely heard. When we were forced on our travels to sleep in uninhabited places, the crickets had got into the folds of our clothes, so that we were obliged to stop an hour every morning in examining our clothes, before we could get rid of them.