296 THE INSECT WORLD. 



menageries for feeding small reptiles. Next to Gryllus come the 

 genera (Ecanthus, insects of the south of Europe, which live on plants, 

 and which one often sees fluttering about flowers ; Sphceria, which 

 live in ant-hills ; Platydactylus ; and, lastly, the Mole Cricket (Gryllo- 

 talpa), whose habits deserve attention for a while. 



The Mole Crickets are distinguished from all other insects by the 

 ' structure of their fore-legs, which are wide and indented, in such a 

 manner as to resemble a hand, analogous to that of the mole. This 

 leg betrays the habits of the cricket much better than our hands 

 betray ours. They make use of them, indeed, as spades, with which 

 they hollow out subterranean galleries, and accumulate at the side of 

 the entrance-hole the rubbish thus drawn out. The French name 

 comes from the old French word courtille, which means garden. Such 

 places and vineyards are the favourite haunts of these destructive 

 insects. 



If the Mole Crickets, or Courtilieres, have spades on their front 

 legs, their hind-legs are very little developed, so that it would be 

 perfectly impossible for them to jump, particularly as their large 

 abdomen would hinder their so doing. The wings are broad, and 

 fold back in the form of a fan ; they make little use of them, and it 

 is only at night-fall that the mole cricket is seen to disport himself, 

 describing curves of no great height in the air. It is found princi- 

 pally in cultivated land, kitchen-gardens, nursery gardens, wheat 

 fields, &c., where it scoops out for itself an oval cavity communicating 

 with the surface by a vertical hole (Fig. 306). On this hole abut 

 numerous horizontal galleries, more or less inclined, which permit the 

 insect to gain its retreat by a great many roads, when pursued.. 



It is easy to understand that an insect which undermines land in 

 this way must cause great damage to cultivation. Whether the crops 

 serve it for food or not, they are not the less destroyed by its under- 

 ground burrowings. Lands infested by the mole cricket are re- 

 cognisable by the colour of the vegetation, which is yellow and 

 withered ; and the rubbish which these miners heap up at the side 

 of the openings leading to their galleries, resembling mole-hills in 

 miniature, betray their presence to the farmer. To destroy them, 

 they pour water or other liquids into their nests, or else they bury, 

 at different distances, vessels filled with water, in which they drown 

 themselves. From the month of April the males betake themselves 

 to the entrance of their burrows, and make their cry of appeal. Their 

 notes are slow, vibrating, and monotonous, and repeated for a long 

 time without interruption, and somewhat resembling the cry of the 

 owl or the goat-sucker. 



