418 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
length, examples usually falling into two series, one in which the 
wings project but little beyond the end of the tegmina, falling 
short of the end of the abdomen, and another in which they 
greatly surpass the abdomen, extending halfway to the end of the 
long caudal cerci. The protuberance on the end of the fore tro- 
chanter is semicircular in outline and thickly 
covered with spinous hairs. 
The Mole-cricket lives in damp soils, usu- 
ally near open water, often on the shores of 
ponds and streams, where it drives its sub- 
terranean tunnels just beneath the surface, 
throwing up long, circuitous ridges, by which 
its presence may be known. The eggs are 
laid in lateral chambers large enough to per- 
mit the Cricket to turn around, in masses of 
from 60 to 100, and often adhere to rootlets. 
Though very widely distributed over a great 
part of North and South America, it is a rela- 
tively scarce and local insect in New England 
and is only exceptionally met with in the 
field. Occasionally a long-winged individual, 
attracted by lights at night, is captured by 
an observant person and referred as a curi- 
osity to the entomologist for information; and 
rarely a suddenly opened burrow beneath 
some sheltering tuft of grass or sedge yields 
one or even several examples, perhaps a female with a numerous 
brood. 
The song is singularly batrachian in quality, a low-toned querr, 
querr, or griiii, griiii, like that of a small toad or frog, and when 
heard in a meadow or from the edge of a pond or stream is almost 
certain to be attributed to such creatures by the uninformed. It 
is not infrequently heard locally in moist places on cloudy days or 
toward night-fall in early autumn, but to find and capture the 
insect producing it is a difficult matter. The note is usually 
sounded in the burrow, and this very likely gives a subterranean 
quality to its tone. In the Tennessee mountains I have heard 
several individuals chirping at once from different points in the 
bed of a shallow stream, among the protruding stones of which 
Fig. 75. — American 
Mole-cricket, Gryllotalpa 
hexadactyla. (After 
Blatchley.) 
