NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 2OI 



though a spade be too boisterous and rough an implement, a 

 pliant stock of grass, gently insinuated into the caverns, will 

 probe their windings to the bottom, and quickly bring out the 

 inhabitant; and thus the humane inquirer may gratify his 

 curiosity without injuring the object of it. It is remarkable, 

 that though these insects are furnished with long legs behind, 

 and brawny thighs for leaping, like grasshoppers ; yet when 

 driven from their holes they show no activity, but crawl along 

 in a shiftless manner, so as easily to be taken; and again, 

 though provided with a curious apparatus of wings, yet they 

 never exert them when there seems to be the greatest occasion. 

 The males only make that shrilling noise, perhaps, out of 

 rivalry and emulation, as is the case with many animals which 

 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 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 be- 

 ing taken out of their knowledge, yet the first that got posses- 

 sion of the chinks would seize on any others that were intruded 

 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 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 en- 

 trance 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 con- 

 siderable distance. In the beginning of the season their notes 



