Chirp! chirp!

Chirp! chirp!

Ah, listen to that cheery song. It is the cricket on the hearth singing thus gayly.

Dear little cricket; he lives in the corner by the fireplace. When all is still we hear his cheery chirp! chirp! chirp!

Sometimes he comes peering out and runs across the hearth, a little black fireside fairy.

Do you know one of the prettiest stories in the world has been written about a cricket?

Charles Dickens wrote it, and it is called "The Cricket on the Hearth."

Be sure to read this beautiful story. If you do not own it, ask to have it for Christmas. It is in the book of "Christmas Tales," a book that everybody ought to have.

Grasshoppers and katydids are pleasant people, but they live out of doors, and they do not seem quite so much like our very own little friends as the crickets.

Of course the crickets live out of doors, too, only once in a while one of them comes into the house to live with us.

We hear them chirping in the grass and among the stones.

There is a certain place near the seashore where the rocks are alive with the black cricket folk.

They come peeping out at you from all sides. They skip over the rocks, and you will often see a pair of long feelers and an inquisitive little head looking around a corner.

You too, know there are crickets, little Nell?

Let us go and see them.

Ah, yes, there is one, looking at us out of inquisitive eyes, over there by that big stone.

Of course they are cousins to the grasshoppers. I knew you would guess that right away.

Yes, John, the little cricket people have flat backs.

Their wing covers do not make a peaked roof over their backs, but are flat on top and bent down at the sides like a box cover.

They are not so long as the wings of the grasshopper, but they overlap on top.

Sometimes they are not so long as the body of the cricket.

Just watch now!

How spry the cricket folk are!

They jump well, but they also run well. They are always running about as though they enjoyed it.

It is not easy to catch one of them unless we, too, are "as spry as a cricket."

Funny little rascals, to come peeping at us like that, from out the crevices in the stones.

When we stir,—pop! they are back out of sight.

They eat leaves, and they enjoy a piece of nice, ripe fruit, or a bit of juicy vegetable.

See here, one has jumped on my hand and is sitting quite still.

It is a male cricket.

How do I know that?

May says because it has no ovipositor.

Yes, that is one way to know.

Look at his wing covers.

See how they are ribbed.

Now look at this cricket Mabel has caught. It is a female, and its wings, you see, are not ornamented like those of the male.

Do you know the meaning of his heavily ribbed wing covers?

Why, his wing covers are his musical instruments. See one of them magnified.

It is divided into spaces like so many little drum-heads. The ridge that runs across the top of the wing is something like a file in structure.

When little Mr. Cricket is in the mood for chirping, he raises his wing covers and rubs them together.

This throws the stiff membranes of which the wing covers are made into vibration, and the result is the cheery call of our little black fairy.

Little Nell says the cricket is more like a brownie than a fairy, and maybe she is right.

You can easily see the crickets rub their wings together if you watch in the fall of the year.

John says, Why do you have to watch in the fall of the year?

Now who can guess?

Yes, May, it is because the crickets are then full-grown, and have large wing covers. At first, in the early summer, they have no wings, and so of course, we could not see them chirp.

The whole grasshopper tribe is a vocal one; the males all have musical instruments, and in Japan, the people are so fond of the song of their grasshopper folk, which are not quite like ours, that they make tiny cages for them.

The chirpers are caught and put in these cages, and sold in the city streets.

Yes, little Nell, the crickets make molasses. So do the katydids.

All these little hopping neighbors of ours seem to understand the useful art of molasses making.

The mole crickets are different from the others.

They burrow in the ground like a mole, and we do not often see them.

The strangest thing about them is their hands.

No, of course they are not really hands, but they look like them.

All the joints of the fore legs are modified to form strong digging tools, and they look very much like the paws of the mole.

They are troublesome fellows, sometimes, when they eat the tender roots of the vegetables in the garden.

You all have seen the little tree cricket, but you might not recognize it as a cricket, it is such a pale little creature.

Its light green body may often be seen on bushes in the summer-time, and, if you look carefully, the form will tell you what the little one is.