The Natural History of Selborne

Small birds, Tanner says green finches, pull off my polyanth blossoms by handfulls.  A neighbour complained to me that her house was over-run with a kind of black-beetle, or, as she expressed herself, with a kind of black-bob, which swarmed in her kitchen when they get up in a morning before day-break.  Soon after this account, I observed an unusual insect in one of my dark chimney-closets; & find since that in the night they swarm also in my kitchen.  On examination I soon ascertained the Species to be the Blatta orientalis of Linnaeus, & the Blatta molendinaria of Mouffet.  The male is winged, the female is not; but shows somewhat like the rudiments of wings, as if in the pupa state.  These insects belonged originally to the warmer parts of America, & were conveyed fro thence by shipping to the East Indies; & by means of commerce begin to prevail in the more N. parts of Europe, as Russia, Sweden, & c.  How long they have abounded in England I cannot say; but have never observed them in my house ’till lately.  They love warmth, & haunt chimney-closets, & the backs of ovens.  Poda says that these, & house-crickets will not associate together; but he is mistaken in that assertion, as Linn. suspected that he was.  They are altogether night insects, lucifugae, never coming forth till the rooms are dark, & still, & escaping away nimbly at the approach of a candle.  Their antennae are remarkably long, slender, & flexile.