Front cover of 'Episodes of insect life'

Decorative book design showing a house cricket Acheta domestica in human dress seated on a tree stump, holding a book and lecturing an audience of insects in foliage. A spider’s web appears above. A line of text ‘He filled their listening ears with wondrous things’ appears at the foot of the design.

Front cover of the book Episodes of insect life by Acheta Domestica (pseud., Miss L.M. Budgen], second series (Reeve, Benham and Reeve, London, 1850).

Inscribed below the main cricket element of the scene is: ‘STAPLES Sc.’

Miss L.M. Budgen (fl.1850s) British illustrator and popular writer on floriculture and entomology.