MOLE-CRICKET. 225 



If they take to the kitchen quarters, they occasion great damage 

 among the plants and roots, by destroying whole beds of cab- 

 bages, young legumes, and flowers. When dug out they seem 

 very slow and helpless, and make no use of their wings by day ; 

 but at night they come abroad, and make long excursions, as I 

 have been convinced by finding stragglers, in a morning, in im- 

 probable places. In fine weather, about the middle of April, 

 and just at the close of day, they begin to solace themselves 

 with a low, dull, jarring note, continued for a long time without 

 interruption, and not unlike the chattering of the fern-owl, or 

 goat-sucker, but more inward.* 



About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once 

 an eye-witness : for a gardener at a ttbuse, where I was on a 

 visit, happening to be mowing, on the 6th of that month, by the 

 side of a canal, his scythe struck too deep, pared off a large piece 

 of turf, and laid open to view a curious scene of domestic 

 economy : 



*' ingentem lato dedit ore feneitram : 



Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt: 

 Apparent penetralia. " 



There were many caverns and winding passages leading to a 

 kind of chamber, neatly smoothed and rounded, and about the 

 size of a moderate snuff-box. Within this secret nursery were 

 deposited near a hundred eggs of a dirty yellow colour, and 

 enveloped in a tough skin, but too lately excluded to contain 

 any rudiments of young, being full of a viscous substance. The 

 eggs lay but shallow, and within the influence of the sun, just 

 under a little heap of fresh-moved mould, like that which is 

 raised by ants. 



When mole-crickets fly they move " cursu undoso" rising and 

 falling in curves, like the other species mentioned before. In 

 different parts of this kingdom people call them fen-crickets, 

 churr-worms, and eve-churrs, all very apposite names. 



Anatomists, who have examined the intestines of these insects, 

 astonish me with their accounts ; for they say that, from the 

 structure, position, and number of their stomachs, or maws, 

 there seems to be good reason to suppose that this and the two 

 former species ruminate or chew the cud like many quadrupeds !f 



* Or it may be compared to the sibilant thrill of the locustelle. ED. 



t This erroneous and strange notion must have arisen from the circumstance of these insect* 

 heing occasionally noticed to more their jaws when not feeding. ED. 



