A writer in the American Naturalist has noticed a common field-cricket gnawing at a kernel of corn until it devoured the germ, and early in the autumn he has found them in cornfields, eating the crowns of kernels or ears that had been blown to the ground, a re sult formerly attributed to mice. Moreover, crickets annoy farmers by eating the bands of cord binding the sheaves of wheat. As Mr. Webster says : " Much of the harvesting is done with self binding harvesting machines, using cord for binding. Judge of the surprise and chagrin of the farmer when, in drawing in his stacks of grain, to find, instead of compactly bound sheaves, only a mass of unbound grain, the bands of cord having been cut in many places by the crickets". - Independent.