The Merry -Hearted (Cricket 



SOME places are favoured far more than others by the 

 merry-hearted tribe of crickets, and the village of 

 Selborne is especially thus favoured never have we 

 heard such cricket music as in the haunts of the old- 

 time naturalist, whose ears were so charmed by the 

 stridulous shrilling. Walking on a midsummer evening 

 down the village street, you may hear crickets in every 

 cottage ; and the music they make is indeed in 

 harmony with summer ideas, with " things rural, 

 verdurous, and joyous." 



Gilbert White studied the crickets closely, and wrote 

 at length about them ; the few passages we have 

 quoted are from three letters filled with intimate 

 details of their lives. 



Taking his spade in hand, he would go out to a dry 

 pasture behind his house, haunted by field-crickets, 

 to open their burrows, and draw out thence, with a 

 pliant stalk of grass, the curious inhabitants learning 

 to distinguish the male, in his shining black, with the 

 golden stripe across the shoulder, from the more dusky 

 female, with the sword-shaped weapon at her tail, 

 with which she deposits her eggs, and closely ex- 

 amining the eggs laid in the secret nurseries, and the 

 ugly larvae they produce. He noticed that though the 

 field-crickets have long legs and brawny thighs for 



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