a pretty secure footing in this country, particularly in sea-port towns. This is B. Americana, or kakerlac, a pretty large species with very long antennæ, and a yellowish thorax having a brown border and two spots of the same colour on the disk. All the truly indigenous Blattæ are comparatively of small size and seldom or never occur in such profusion as to occasion much injury or annoyance. Even the depredations of the common B. orientalis are insignificant compared with those of foreign lands, where species of more formidable dimensions are sometimes so abundant and obnoxious as to produce no trifling inconvenience to the inhabitants.
"The cockroaches," says Drury in his work on exotic insects, "are another race of pestiferous beings, equally noisome and mischievous to natives or strangers, but particularly to collectors. These nasty and voracious insects fly out in the evenings, and commit monstrous depredations; they plunder and erode all kinds of victuals, dressed and undressed, and damage all sorts of clothing, especially those which are touched with powder, pomatum, and similar substances, every thing made of leather, books, paper, and various other articles, which, if they do not destroy, at least they soil, as they frequently deposit a drop of their excrement where they settle, and, some way or other, by that means damage what they cannot devour. They fly into the flame of candles, and sometimes into the dishes; are very fond of ink and of oil, into which they are apt to fall and perish. In this case they soon become most offensively putrid, so that a man might as well sit over
