THE cockroach, the black-beetle of the London kitchen, is a creature that excites an amount of repulsion that cannot be accounted for or explained. There is nothing threatening in its appearance, as in that of some of the larvÆ, notably the one popularly known as the “devil’s coach-horse.” It is unprovided with offensive weapons at either extremity; it can neither sting nor bite. It has not the habit of startling nervous persons by leaping suddenly upon them, as do the cricket and grasshopper. There is nothing about its figure that should be displeasing to the eye. It is, as far as man is concerned, absolutely harmless, and yet it certainly excites in the majority of persons a feeling of aversion approaching abhorrence, such as no other insect gives rise to. The cold light of reason fails to discover any ground for such a feeling, and it has been gravely adduced by some as a proof of the truth of the belief in the transmigration of souls; and that only upon the assumption that the souls of evil men are condemned to pass a portion of their future existence in the form of cockroaches, can the general antipathy to these creatures be accounted for.

There are many unsolved problems connected with the cockroach. Where does he come from, and especially where did he abide before man began to build houses? In this country, at any rate, he always takes up his abode in the habitation man provides for him. No one ever came across him in the fields or woods. It is in the house he lives and multiplies. He fears man and shuns his society, and yet appears to have a mysterious attraction to his abodes; the cricket only among insects, and the mouse and the rat among quadrupeds, share with the cockroach his partiality for human dwellings. But the cricket is but a domesticated grasshopper, the mouse has a country cousin, and the rat will take up his abode in many other localities. The cockroach alone is never found elsewhere, and has no relations in any way closely connected with him who are dwellers in the open air.

Next to man’s houses, the blatta, as he is scientifically called, loves his ships; but the variety that is found in vessels, especially in those trading with the East, is a larger, uglier, and in every way more repulsive creature than his English cousin. Once on board—and there is scarce a ship afloat into which he has not smuggled himself—he is there to stay, and short of sinking the vessel, or of fastening down the hatches and suffocating him with the fumes of sulphur, there is no way of getting rid of him. He multiplies with extraordinary rapidity, and his odour, when he is present in multitude, is so strong that in the hold many ships trading in hot countries it is almost overpowering. The flatness of his body enables him to crawl through every chink and crevice, and all efforts to keep him out of the cabins are unavailing. The ship variety has none of that fear of man that sends the kitchen cockroaches scuttling in every direction at the approach of a maid with a light. They will fearlessly perambulate his cabin, take up their posts on the deck-beams over his head, will watch him gravely with waving antennÆ, and the moment they discover that he is asleep will run over his head and face, entangle themselves in his beard and hair, and gently nibble the skin on the tips of his fingers and toes.

The cockroach is an admirable judge of the weather. On board a ship the approach of a rain squall will bring them up from the hold into the cabins in tens of thousands; and in vessels where they abound they will blacken the ceiling, drop on to the tables, and drive nervous passengers for refuge to the deck. Whether the British variety is equally affected by the weather is a point at present undetermined, for as he does not emerge from his hiding places until the servants have gone upstairs and the lights are out, his habits have never been examined very closely.

The eccentricity in the movements of the cockroach has doubtless had a share in producing the feeling with which he is regarded. His ordinary pace is a fast though stealthy walk, but he is given to sudden pauses, remaining immovable, save for the constant waving of his long antennÆ, which show that he is deep in the meditation of past sins or future wickedness. But when alarmed his speed is extraordinary: he is gone in an instant like a flash, and it needs no ordinary quickness of eye and action to bring the avenging foot down upon him. Even in his death he acts upon the human nerves, exploding with a sharp crack of so singularly thrilling a description that many even of those who most greatly dislike the cockroach cannot bring themselves to slay it.

It is on this account principally that nothing like an organised war is waged against the cockroach. Feeble efforts are made now and then to get rid of it by scattering beetle paste, and other supposed destroyers, about the kitchen, or by setting traps for it to walk into; but these measures, although effective to a certain point, make but small inroads upon its numbers, and it is only when it ascends the stairs and begins to pervade the house that serious attention is paid to it. There are men in London who make a livelihood by clearing houses, restaurants, and other dwellings, of cockroaches. Their methods are a secret, but they are certainly efficacious, and did the operators advertise their addresses they would be very largely patronised. Some have supposed that they charm the insects from their hiding-places by the sounds of sweet music; others that they possess a perfume which the cockroach cannot withstand, and that by it he is attracted to his death; while a few hold the belief that the insects are induced to leave their abodes by the use of cabalistic words.

The cockroach, like most of the order of orthoptera to which it belongs, retains the same form from the date it issues from the egg to its death. Familiar instances of this peculiarity are the earwig, locust, and grasshopper. The only difference between the first and second stage is that they do not become winged until arriving at maturity, the wings being then folded up under the leathery reticulated wing-case that distinguishes the order. It is rarely, indeed, that the cockroach uses the means of locomotion with which nature has provided it. It is possible that if it took to out-door exercise it would do so; but, passing its life as it does indoors, it has no occasion whatever for the use of its wings, and many people are even unaware that it is provided with them. The cockroach is not particular as to its food, and will devour almost anything that comes in its way. Crumbs of bread, fragments of fat or meat, sweets of all kinds, and indeed almost all food consumed by man, are welcome to it. It has a marked partiality for boot blacking, and is even able to digest leather. It will drink water, but its tendency is rather towards liquids of a sweet or intoxicating nature. Treacle or sugar in water attracts it, but it has a marked preference for beer, and traps for its ensnarement are generally baited with this liquor.

Unlike the cricket and the grasshopper, the cockroach is mute, at least so far as our ears are able to perceive, although it is certain that it can carry on long conversations with its own species, and two of them may often be seen standing head to head in close confabulation, enforcing their arguments with waves and flourishes of their antennÆ. Entomologists may assign the blatta a specific place among the orders and genera of insects in accordance with their characteristics, but morally they stand apart. They are the rats of the insect world, swarming out in their armies from dark recesses in search of garbage; no one, indeed, can doubt that, had they the power, they would not hesitate to follow the example of the rats on the Rhine, and to devour a bishop if he fell in their way. Other insects stand apart from them. The cricket may dwell in their midst, but he is not of them, while no observer has remarked a single case of friendship between the industrious bee, the impetuous and hardworking wasp, or, indeed, any other of what may be called respectable insects, with the cockroach—a strong proof that the creature is viewed with the same marked disfavour by the insect world that it excites in the breast of man.