246 THE NATURAL HISTORY [LETT. 



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 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 a 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 : 



" ingentem lato dedit ore fenestram : 

 Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt : 

 Apparent penetralia." 



(ViRQ. ^En. ii. 481483.) 



" A yawning breach of monstrous size he made : 

 The inmost house is now to light displayed : 

 The admitted light with sudden lustre falls 

 On the long galleries and the splendid halls." 



(DRYDEN.) 



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 a 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 sub- 

 stance. The eggs lay but shallow, and within the influence of 

 the sun, just under a little heap of fresh-moved 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 



