Identifier: zoologicallectur21809shaw (find matches)
Title: Zoological lectures delivered at the Royal Institution in the years 1806 and 1807
Year: 1809 (1800s)
Authors: Shaw, George, 1751-1813 Mearns, Edgar Alexander, 1856-1916, former owner. DSI Royal Institution of Great Britain
Subjects: Zoology
Publisher: London : Printed for George Kearsley, by Thomas Davison
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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tta or Cockroach is dis-tinguished by the flattened form of the body; bya pair of long, bristle-shaped horns at the head,by the wings lying horizontally over the body,and by a pair of tips or processes resembling shorthorns at the end of the body. The Cockroachesare a numerous and disagreeable tribe ; generallyrunning very swiftly, chiefly appearing by night,and feeding on ahnost all kind of animal sub-,stances: they are mostly natives of warm cli-^mates: the species now so very common in thiscountry, and especially in the metropolis, is sup-posed to have been originally imported from the.Eastern regions; it has obtained among the Lon-don vulgar the very improper title of the BlackBeetle, a name which not only confounds it with aspecies of real Beetle, emphatically so called inthe country, but also leads people erroneously tosuppose it of the Beetle tribe or order Coleoptera.It is the Blatta Orientalis of Linnaeus, and shouldlofi called tlie Eastern or Oriental Cockroach. To JBXiATTA.
Text Appearing After Image:
yJmericana LECTURE IX. • 101 be particular in its description would be unneces-sary. In South America and the West Indies is aspecies much resembling it, but of a rather largersize, of a longer shape, and of a fine chesnut-co-lour: it is the B. Americana of Linnasus or Ame-rican Cockroach, and is excellently figured by thecelebrated Madam Merian, in her splendid workon the insects of Surinam. But the most remark-able and destructive of all the Cockroaches is theB. gigantea, or Great Cockroach, found in manyparts of the West Indies and America. It isoften seen of nearly the diameter of an egg, andis of a brown colour. Like the rest of the tribe,it comes out chiefly by night, and devours almostevery article of an animal nature, thus committinggreat devastation in domestic articles. It has alsoa most troublesome practice of making a kind ofdrumming noise behind wainscot or paper bynight, so that only those who are very good sleep-ers can repose in rooms which are haunted by thisinsect.

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