NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 241 
They are solitary beings, living singly male and female, each as it 
may happen ; but there must be a time when the sexes have some 
intercourse, and then the wings may be useful perhaps during the 
hours of night. When the males meet they will fight fiercely, as I 
found by some which I put into the crevices of a dry stone wall, 
where I should have been glad to have made them settle. For 
though they seemed distressed by being taken out of their know- 
ledge, yet the first that got possession of the chinks would seize on 
any other that were intruded upon them with a vast row of serrated 
fangs. With their strong jaws, toothed like the shears of a lob- 
ster’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 indis- 
criminately, and on a little platform which they make just by, they 
drop their dung; and never, in the day time, 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 
stiller 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 sweet- 
ness and melody ; nor do harsh sounds always displease. We are 
more apt to be captivated or disgusted with the associations which 
they promote than with the notes themselves. Thus the shrilling 
of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously 
delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer 
ideas of everything 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 ele- 
gantly. All that ever I have seen at that season were in their pupa 
state, and had only the rudiments of wings, lying under a skin or 
coat, which must be cast before the insect can arrive at its perfect 
state ;* from whence I should suppose that the old ones of last 
* We have observed that they cast these skins in April, which are then seen lying at the 
mouths of their holes. 
R 
