24 
POPULAR SGIENOE NEWS. 
[Fejsruaky, i8c,o. 
were greatly increased. We gained, as active mem- 
berg, J. Ames and S. Cone, and as honorar;^ 
members the following gentlemen, most of them 
professors in ths Johns Hopkins University : H. 
Newell Martin, Ira Remsen, Alfred M. Mayer, Wm. 
H. Howell, H. V. Wilson, F. H. Herrick, E. A. 
Andrews, and A. C. Gill. One of our members, 
Mr. R. G. Harrison, presented to us a very nice 
chest of drawers for minerals, and at another time 
we had a good-sized shelf-cabinet built for alcoholic 
specimens. The latter is now quite full. A short 
while ago we created a junior membership, our 
active membership being limited to persons 18 
years of age and excluding girls. The juniors will 
have all the privileges of the Chapter, but no voice 
in its government. In the first part of the year, 
Mr. Orr, a graduate student of the University, gave 
us a lecture and demonstration on hypnotism, 
which we opened to University men, and it proved 
of a great deal of interest. Dr. Geo. A. Williams, 
professor of geology here, gave us a delightful lec- 
ture on " How to Study Geology," and we derived 
a great deal of useful information. Our latest step 
was to raise the yearly subscription and initiation, 
each to three dollars, hoping that it will be of 
benefit. As the spring approaches we look forward 
to many dolightful days in the open air. — Edward 
McDowell, Pres., 117 W. Franklin Street; Charles 
S. Lewis, Sec, Box no, Johns Hopkins University. 
449, Fitchburg, Mass., [F]. — Our Chapter is in a 
"live" condition, and has done some systematic 
work in botany and entomology. We classify all 
our work, and keep full reports of what each mem- 
ber accomplishes. We should like to correspond 
with other Chapters. — G. F. Whittemore, Pres. 
507, Tonawanda, N. Y., [A]. — We have gained 
three members, and now have thirteen. We have 
held thirty-four meetings, and have given one suc- 
cessful public entertainment. Our President is Mr. 
J. O. Wilson. — Bettie Fisher, Sec. 
523, Madison, So. Dakota, [A].— We now have 
twenty-four active members. We meet every week, 
with good attendance. We appoint three or faur 
members to read papers at each meeting. Mr. 
Yoder gives us lessons in botany and zoology. We 
have made two expeditions — one to Lake Madison 
and one to Lake Herman. We have a case for 
minerals and about sixty specimens. We have also 
begun a collection of insects, and one of birds' eggs. 
We have opened one Indian mound, under Mr. 
Yoder"s direction, and obtained good specimens of 
beads, arrow-heads, etc. — G. Murray, Sec. 
565, Waseca, Wis., [A]. — Two of our members 
are taking Prof. Guttenberg's course in mineralogy. 
Another has gathered 150 sets of eggs. The Cas- 
pian tern was noted here last spring for the first 
time. — J. F. Murphy, Sec. 
577, Barton, Ross, England, [A]. — The subject 
at present taken up is entomology, and we are 
making collections of lepidoptera, coleoptera, and 
hymenoptera. The Chapter has the advantage 01 
owning a very good microscope. All the members 
beg to send their best wishes to the A. A., and 
to record their hearty appreciation of the good work 
it is doing. — Frances Maclean, Pres. 
ORIGINAL OBSERVATIONS. 
25S. Flight of a Hum.mino-Bird. — May 17, in 
my garden, I saw a humming-bird describe several 
times the following curve : 
Many of the foregoing reports have been 
unavoidably delayed, and appear out of their 
regular order ; but they are too good to lose, 
and are much better late than never. Reports 
from the Third Century (Chapters 201-300) 
should reach the President by March 1 . 
STOP 
VERY TAST 
At the lower part of the curve, I could not see 
him, for his swiftness, and he was then making a 
very loud humming noise. — G. H. Claybrooke, 
Santa Monica, Cal. 
[Written for "The Out.Door World."] 
MOLE CRICKETS. 
BY S. L. CLAYES, 
Of the Agit»8iz Association. 
Running the share deeply into the earth, what is 
this that the ploughman has turned up, in this old- 
world garden, lying in the village of Bresselsleigh, 
which is quite in the heart of Merry England.' 
Something which, surely, our American eyes have 
never seen before. A queer creature, about two 
inches long, of a velvety-brown color, its body 
divided into three portions. After a closer look, we 
observe that its center is of a somewhat grayish 
tint. Two wings spring from the hinder part; each 
lengthens into a sort of fillet that stretches far 
beyond the short wing-covers, reaching, in fact, 
quite to the end of the body. 
But the most noticeable things of all about the 
stranger are its two wonderful fore-legs. These are 
enormously large and strong, far more so than its 
other legs, (which are themselves of no contempti- 
ble size), and gradually broaden at their ends into 
something resembling a hand, terminating in five 
short, strong fingers, — or, perhaps, claws may be 
a more nearly accurate name by which to call them. 
Of these claws, one is star-shaped. It must be that 
this is that curious creature, the English mole 
cricket, we think; and we do not wonder that it is 
so named, for the insect, while very like a cricket, 
also bears, in some respects, a close personal resem- 
blance to the mole. Especially is this true of these 
digging feet, which seem to be as distinctly out of 
proportion to the rest of its body, as would the 
brawny wrist and hand of a laboring man if it was 
seen protruding from the little dress-sleeve of a two- 
year-old child. But these stout, broad feet are 
almost precisely like those of a mole. 
The mole crickets live under ground, and seldom 
emerge into the open air; indeed, one may say they 
never do so, except at night and during fine, dry 
weather. With their strong fore-feet, with which 
they can work even more expeditiously than the 
mole, they dig for themselves burrows in the earth, 
fashioned into galleries leading from a central 
chamber, and communicating with the upper air by 
a small aperture. Although the little creature pre- 
fers to work in a soil composed of loose sand, and 
her tunnels are only about one-fourth of an inch in 
diameter, she manages to finish them very smoothly 
upon the inside. Her central chamber — which is 
not lar from the size of a couple of hazel-nuts, and 
used as a living and sleeping-room — is not designed 
to serve as a cool and shady residence during the 
warm weather alone. It is sunk deep enough down 
to be but slightly affected by any sudden change of 
temperature, and here our little friend retires when 
winter comes, and falls into that long, death-like 
sleep which is so common among insects, and is 
possible even to some among the higher organisms 
of our globe. 
In this cell she passes the greater part of her life 
quite alone, for mole crickets are not gregarious, or > 
even pairing, but are solitary creatures, each one 
setting up for him or herself a separate establish- 
ment, with chambers arid galleries all complete, and 
meeting with their kind only when they go out to 
take the air above ground. Even in these rare 
gatherings they do not seem to be a harmonious 
little people. The males often fight each other to 
the death, the conqueror celebrating the victory by 
eating up bodily all that is left of his vanquished 
foe. But. although cannibals upon occasion, and 
capable of subsisting for months even on animal 
food, the mole cricket is really a vegetable-eater. 
Its ordinary diet is the roots of plants, and in some 
places it becomes a true pest, through the damage 
it does to crops, and even grass and flowers, by 
feeding upon their roots. 
In the evenings and nights toward the end of 
spring and beginning of summer, the mole cricket 
sounds his love-making song. His chirp, which is 
somewhat softer in its shrillness and more musical 
than that of the domestic cricket, is supposed to be 
produced in precisely the same way, that is, by the 
friction of the wing-sheaths ; indeed, the sound has 
been made artificially by rubbing together those of 
a newly-killed insect. This song, which is truly a 
rather dull, jarring sort of music, has gained for the 
mole cricket a good many popular names. In some 
parts of England it is known as churr-worm, in 
others as jarr-worm, and again as eve-churr, and as 
croaker. For another of its names — that of earth- 
crab — it is indebted to the hard, shelly covering of 
its limbs and body. 
The female lays her eggs in the spring. They are 
about the size of a sugared caraway seed, and are in 
color of a grayish-yellow. Each insect lays from 
one hundred to four hundred. The mother builds 
a special chamber for their reception, which in size 
and shape is very much like a hen's egg longitudi- 
nally cut in Iialf. This apartment, while placed 
quite near the surface of the ground, that it may 
benefit by the warmth of the sun's rays, is most 
carefully guarded. It is entered by a complicated 
system of winding galleries that .surround it on all 
sidts. It is also strengthened by fortifications and 
entrenchments, while circling the whole is a ditch 
of such size that few insects are capable of passing it. 
The mother is devoted in her care of her young. 
There is a species of black beetle which is one of 
her most dreaded and dangerous enemies, and 
which often succeeds in destroying her little ones in 
great numbers. She watches this creature with the 
greatest care, placing herself near the entrance of 
her nest, and when the beetle has fairly got inside 
it, this cunning guardian jumps upon it from behind, 
seizes it, and fairly bites it in two. The young 
ones live together for a considerable time, under 
their mother's care in the home which she has pre- 
pared for them. They are very active little creatures, 
in both the larva and pupa states, running about in 
all directions. • 
The mole cricket is always exquisitely neat and 
clean in its own person, both to the eye and touch, 
notwithstanding its earthy abode and its continuous 
labors in the way of burrowing in th. soil to the end 
of building and fortifying its dwellings and nur- 
reries. The cause of its exemption from impurity 
lies in a fine down that covers its skin, and, while 
adding to its beauty by giving it a soft, velvet-like 
texture, also eflectively prevents the adhesion to it 
of the earth in which the little creature spends so . 
great a part of its life in w orking. 
