of the Mole-cricket. 403 



may^be heard at the distance of some yai'ds ; but when made 

 by numerous individuals at the same time it may be heard, as 

 I have reason to believe, at the distance of some hundred yards, 

 provided the air be in a favourable state. I have usually 

 found the insect within a foot and a half of the surface, and 

 in parts where the peat was neither quite dry nor very moist; 

 of such a consistence indeed as is most favourable to the 

 mining operations of the animal. 



The accounts of different authors differ as to the food of the 

 mole-cricket. Having kept several individuals in glass vessels 

 during some weeks, I observed that of all kinds of vegetable 

 food they preferred the potatoe, while cucumber they hardly 

 touched ; but if raw meat were offered them they attacked it 

 with great greediness, and in preference to every thing else. 

 And when they had been kept, though even but for a short 

 time, without any food, they did not hesitate to attack each 

 other ; in which case the victor soon devoured the flesh and 

 softer parts of the vanquished. As I have not unfrequently 

 found them in their native haunts maimed in various parts of 

 the body, I have very little doubt that, although captivity may 

 increase their ferocity, they are not, even in a natural state, 

 free from each other's attacks. If they are carnivorous, they 

 probably feed on worms and various larvae, which are abun- 

 dant in the peat-bogs above mentioned, for I have repeatedly 

 found the horny and indigestible parts of insects within their 

 stomachs. Similar relics I have found in the stomach of the 

 Pneumora and Gryllus viridissivms. The two following facts - 

 attest in the tribe of insects to which the mole-cricket belongs 

 a remarkable degree of voracity, and an equally remarkable 

 power of abstaining from food. My friend Dr. Macartney, 

 of Dublin, informs me that he has known a gryllus devour a 

 poi'tion of its own body. On the other hand, my friend Mr. 

 Buckland, of this university, gave me, at the commencement 

 of the present summer, a living gryllotalpa, which had been 

 confined during nine or ten months in a tin case containing a 

 small quantity of garden mould, without the possibility of 

 having met with any other nourishment than such as that por- 

 tion of mould might be sujjposed to contain. 



External Characters of the perfect Gryllotalpa. 



In this, as in the case of every other animal with whose 

 habits of life we are acquainted, we see a perfect accommoda- 

 tion in form and structiu'e to the circumstances in which the 

 individual is naturally placed. Destined like the common mole 

 to live beneath the surface of the earth, and to excavate a 

 passage for itself through the soil which it inhabits, the gryl- 

 3 E 2 k)l:dpa 



