GRYLLOTALPA GRYLLOTALPA. 125 



Spence speak of a female defending with its jaws the 

 eggs, which were menaced by a black ground-beetle. 



NYMPH.- -Between the nymph and the imago the 

 resemblance is very close, except for the smaller size 

 of the former and the absence or rudimentary condition 



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of the organs of flight. It seems clear that the nymph 

 requires more than a year to complete its growth and 

 become an imago. It therefore must hibernate, as the 

 imago probably does also, for Bracken took a full- 

 grown male alive on the sand-hills near St. Minver, 

 North Cornwall, during- the week ending- 20 December 



o o 



1912. The mother watches the newly-hatched young 



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carefully and, it is said, supplies them with food till 

 their first ecdysis, after which they disperse and look 

 after themselves. Staveley says, however, that they 

 live together till they are adult during the summer 

 following after that in which they were hatched. It 

 has been stated that the mother eats most of the 

 young; but another writer says that it is only the 

 males which are guilty. Some of these statements, 

 however, probably need confirmation. 



VARIATION.- -There is a rare variety with abbreviated 

 wings, Qrr/llotalpa cophta de Haan, which was con- 

 sidered a distinct species, but is now referred to 

 G. gryllotalpa Linn., variation in wing-length being 

 not uncommon amongst the Orthoptera, and insuffi- 

 cient to distinguish species. Var. coplita has been 

 taken at Brindisi and elsewhere (B runner). 



DATE.- -About mid- April the mole-crickets may be 

 heard singing their love-ditty in a low dull jarring 

 uninterrupted note not unlike that of the nightjar or 

 goatsucker (Caprimulgus curopmis Linn.), but more 

 inward.* Gilbert White found that in one case they 

 laid their eggs about the beginning of May. If these 

 hatch in three or four weeks, the young nymphs would 

 be about in the summer. It seems that these are not 

 adult till the next year. Their parents also, it would 



* Kirby & Spence, ii, p. 39-i. 



