Short Chapters on Natural History

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1871 edition. Excerpt: ...day, or even by gaslight. In some of the underground kitchens in London, as soon as the servants are gone to bed, the cockroaches are said to swarm out in such numbers as completely to cover the floors; but if anybody comes in with a candle, they immediately begin to scamper away to their holes. They will eat anything, animal or vegetable, --even woollen stockings, linen, and paper; and they eat in all stages of their existence, except that of the egg. Now, with moths and butterflies, it is only the larva that eats. Anybody who has ever kept silk-worms knows this: the caterpillar eats fast enough, but the chrysalis and the moth eat nothing. With the cockroach it is different; it is equally active and voracious in the larva, the pupa, and the perfect state; so that it is three times as destructive as insects belonging to some other orders. Westwood, in his " Introduction to Entomology," says: "Although composed of a single piece, the edge along one side" (where would be the opening of the carpet bag) "is slit, the margins of each side of the slit being denticulated and fitting into each other, and being cemented together so strongly, that the other portions are even less strong than at the union of the sutures. Nature has however provided the inclosed insects with a key to this prison, enabling them to escape at the fitting period; this consists of a fluid, which they emit, which softens the cement of the denticulated margins, and affords to the young captives the means of escape from a situation in which they had previously attained a sufficiency of strength to enable them to follow their habits." Besides the common species, well known everywhere, there is a much larger one, a native of America, which has...