OF SELBORNE. 279 
like the shears of a lobster’s claws, they perforate 
and round their curious regular cells, having no 
fore-claws to dig like the mole-cricket. When 
taken in hand I could not but wonder that they 
never offered to defend themselves, though armed 
with such formidable weapons. Of such herbs as 
grow before the mouths of their burrows they eat 
indiscriminately, and ona little platform which they 
make just by they drop their dung, and never in 
the daytime seem to stir more than two or three 
inches from home. Sitting in the entrance of their 
caverns, they chirp all night as well as day, from 
the middle of the month of May to the middle of 
July ; and in hot weather, when they are most 
vigorous, they make the hills echo ; and, in the still 
hours of darkness, may be heard to a considerable 
distance. In the beginning of the season their notes 
are more faint and inward, but become louder as 
the summer advances, and so die away again by 
degrees. 
Sounds do not always give us pleasure according 
to their sweetness and melody, nor do harsh sounds 
always displease. We are more apt to be capti- 
vated or disgusted with the associations which they 
promote than with the notes themselves. Thus the 
shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and strid- 
ulous, yet marvellously delights some hearers, fill- 
ing their minds with a train of summer ideas of ev- 
erything that is rural, verdurous, and joyous. 
About the 10th of March the crickets appear at 
the mouths of their cells, which they then open and 
bore, and shape very elegantly. All that ever I 
have seen at that season were in their pupa state, 
and had only the rudiments of wings lying under a 
