124 BRITISH ORTHOPTERA. 



EGGS.- -Tlie mole-cricket is credited with laying 

 some 200-400 eggs which hatch in three to four 

 weeks. Gilbert White's off-quoted letter xlviii con- 

 tains the following interesting note :--" About the 

 beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once 

 an eye-witness; for a gardener at a house where I 

 was on a visit, happened to be mowing, on the 6th 

 of that month, by the side of a canal, his scythe 

 struck too deep, pared off a large piece of turf, and 

 laid open to view a curious scene of domestic economy. 

 There were many caverns and winding passages lead- 

 ing to a kind of chamber, neatly smoothed and rounded, 

 and about the size of a moderate snuff-box. Within 

 this secret nursery were deposited near a hundred 

 eggs of a dirty yellow colour, and enveloped in a 

 tough skin, but too lately excluded to contain any 

 rudiments of y 011112% beingf full of a viscous substance. 



i/ O J O 



The eggs lay but shallow, and within the influence 

 of the sun, just under a little heap of fresh-mowed 

 mould, like that which is raised by ants." G. "W. 

 Kirkaldy in a paper on " Maternal Solicitude in 

 BAiynchota and other Non-social Insects ' (' Entom.' 

 1903, p. 113) states that the earliest reference to 

 parental care in the mole-cricket appears to be that 

 of Goedaerdt,* who states that it takes particular care 

 of its eggs, raising up the nests in a hot and dry 

 season, so that the young almost touch the surface of 

 the earth and are thereby cherished by the sun's heat; 

 contrariwise they sink the nests down when the air 

 is cold and moist. They also act as unceasing sentinels 

 round the nest. Eoesel cites this account and gives 

 a coloured sectional drawing of the nest and eggs. 

 Audouin states that all authors agree in saying that 

 the mole-cricket takes the greatest care of its young, 

 but Groedaerdt is the only author Kirkaldy can trace 

 who relates his personal observations. Kirby and 



* Goedaerdt in ' Metamorphosis Naturalis ' (cir. 1669) gives in pi. Ixxvi, 

 vol. i, p. 140, a fairly good figure of the mole-cricket, and below it a batch 

 of eggs in " nest." 



