MINERS 57 



his menu, as they do for the House Cricket, which 

 has the reputation of being a deadly enemy to the 

 cockroach. Anyhow, in the South of England, 

 where they occur, Mole Crickets have a bad reputa- 

 tion with gardeners for the havoc they make among 

 cultivated plants. 



Kirby and Spence describe it as " a terrible 

 devastator of the produce of the kitchen garden. 

 It burrows underground, and devouring the roots 

 of plants thus occasions them to wither, and even 

 gets into hot-beds. It does so much mischief in 

 Germany that the author of an old book on garden- 

 ing, after giving a figure of it, exclaims, ' Happy are 

 the places where this pest is unknown ! ' " We 

 have good reason to believe that these eminent 

 authorities were wrong, and that far more good is 

 done by its destruction of insects than the harm it 

 does by cutting roots. 



The female Mole Cricket, in addition to her 

 food-finding burrows, constructs a vertical shaft, 

 and a little to the side of the bottom of it she 

 hollows out an oval cell with smooth and even 

 polished walls. In this cell she lays her eggs, to 

 the number of several hundreds, and is said to 

 watch over the young crickets until they have shed 

 their first skins, after which they separate and each 

 digs a burrow for itself. 



The Field Cricket (Gryllus campestris), which 

 much more nearly resembles the House Cricket, also 

 burrows, but not so extensively. Its burrows are 

 more for the purpose of retreat than for hunting, 



