284 NATURAL HISTORY 
As mole-crickets often infest gardens by the 
sides of canals, they are unwelcome guests to the 
gardener, raising up ridges in their subterraneous 
progress, and rendering the walks unsightly. If 
they take to the kitchen quarters, they occasion 
great damage among the plants and roots, by de- 
stroying whole beds of cabbages, young legumes, 
and flowers. When dug out, they seem very slow 
and helpless, and make no use of their wings by 
day, but at night they come abroad and make long 
excursions, as I have been convinced by finding 
stragglers in a morning in improbable places. In 
fine weather, about the middle of April, and just at 
the close of day, they begin to solace themselves 
with a low, dull, jarring note, continued for a long 
time without interruption, and not unlike the chat- 
tering of the fern-owl or goat-sucker, but more in- 
ward. 
About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, 
as I was once an eyewitness; for a gardener at a 
house where I was on a visit happening to be mow- 
ing 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 : 
‘“‘Ingentem lato dedit ore fenestram : 
Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt. 
Apparent * * * * * penetralia.” 
There were many caverns and winding passages 
leading to a kind of chamber, neatly smoothed and 
rounded, and about the size of a moderate snuff- 
box. Within the secret nursery were deposited 
near a hundred eggs, of a dirty yellow colour, and 
enveloped in a tough skin. The eggs lay but shal- 
