224 NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 



they move "volatu undoso," in waves or curves, like wopd- 

 peckers, opening and shutting their wings at every stroke, and 

 so are always rising or sinking. 



When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the 

 house where I am now writing, they become noisome pests, 

 flying into the candles, and dashing into people's faces ; but may 

 be blasted and destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their 

 crevices and crannies. In families, at such times, they are, like 

 Pharaoh's plague of frogs, "in their bedchambers, and upon 

 their beds, and in their ovens, and in their kneading-troughs."* 

 Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a brisk attrition of their 

 wings. Cats catch hearth crickets, and, playing with them as 

 they do with mice, devour them. Crickets may be destroyed, 

 like wasps, by phials half filled with beer, or any liquid, and set 

 in their haunts ; for, being always eager to drink, they will crowd 

 in till the bottles are full. 



LETTER XLVIII To THE HON. DAINES BARRINGTON. 



Selborne. 



How diversified are the modes of life not only of incongruous 

 but even of congenerous animals ; and yet their specific distinc- 

 tions are not more various than their propensities. Thus, while 

 the field-cricket delights in sunny dry banks, and the house r 

 cricket rejoices amidst the glowing heat of the kitchen hearth or 

 oven, the gryllus gryllo talpa\ (the 

 mole-cricket), haunts moist meadows, 

 and frequent the sides of ponds and 

 banks of streams, performing all its 

 functions in a swampy wet soil. With 

 a pair of fore-feet, curiously adapted 

 to the purpose, it burrows and works 

 under ground like the mole, raising a Mole-cricket, 



ridge as it proceeds, but seldom throwing up hillocks. 



As mole-crickets often infest gardens by the sides of canals, 

 they are unwelcome guests to the gardener, raising up ridges in 

 their subterraneous progress, and rendering the walks unsightly. 



* Exod. viii. 3. 



t Gryllotalpa vulgarit, of modern hystematiets. -Eo. 



