232 NATURAL HISTORY 



exert some sprightly note during their breeding time : it is 

 raised by a brisk friction of one wing against the other. 

 They are solitary beings, living singly male or 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 knowledge, yet the first that got 

 possession of the chinks would seize on any that were ob*- 

 truded upon them with a vast row of serrated fangs. With 

 their strong jaws, toothed like the shears of a lobster'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 indiscriminately ; 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 in- 

 ward ; but become louder as the summer advances, and so die 

 away again by degrees. 



Sounds do not always give us pleasure according to their 

 sweetness and melody ; nor do harsh sounds always displease. 

 We are more apt to be captivated or disgusted with the asso- 

 ciations which they promote, than with the notes themselves. 

 Thus the shrilling of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridu- 

 lous, yet marvellously delights some hearers, filling their 

 minds with a train of summer ideas of every thing that is 

 rural, verdurous, and joyous. 



About the tenth of March the crickets appear at the mouths 



