246 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 
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 chattering of the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, but more 
inward. 
About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once 
an eye-witness ; for a gardener at an house where I was on a visit, 
happening to be mowing, 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 :— 
«ec 
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 this secret nursery were deposited 
near an hundred eggs of a dirty yellow colour, and enveloped in a 
tough skin, but too lately excluded to contain any rudiments of 
young, being full of a viscous substance. The eggs lay but shallow, 
and within the influence of the sun, just under a little heap of 
fresh-mowed mould, like that which is raised by ants. 
When mole-crickets fly they move “ cursu undoso,” rising and 
falling in curves, like the other species mentioned before. In 
different parts of this kingdom people call them fen-crickets, churr- 
worms, and eve-churrs, all very apposite names. 
Anatomists, who have examined the intestines of these insects 
astonish me with their accounts; for they say that, from the 
structure, position, and number of their stomachs, or maws, there 
seems to be good reason to suppose that this and the two former 
species ruminate or chew the cud like many quadrupeds! 
