276 THE INSECT DESCRIBED. 



its cousin, the grasshopper, in vaulting exercises, even were it 

 not otherwise prevented by its large abdomen. Nor is it 

 much assisted by its wings, for though they are broad, they 

 are not organised for rapid flight, and the mole-cricket makes 

 but little use of them. Nature, however, has compensated it 

 for all these disadvantages by the gift of those strong, power- 

 ful, flexible fore-feet of which I have already spoken. 



The species generally met with in gardens, corn-fields, and 

 orchards is the Gryllotalpa vulgaris of Latreille, identical 

 with the Gryllus gryllotalpa of Linnseus. It has a brown head, 

 garnished with rusty-coloured mandibles ; the thorax is of a 

 brownish-gray, velvety, tinged with red in the fore parts ; the 

 elytra, or wing-sheaths, which are much shorter than the abdo- 

 men, are gray, and marked by black and conspicuously pro- 

 minent nerves ; the wings, folded back like a fan, are about 

 one-fourth longer than the abdomen. 



The mole-cricket, mark me ! is no more of a root-eater 

 than the mole; it is carnivorous, like the Staphylinus. As 

 an experiment in confirmation of this statement, we shut up 

 one of these curious Orthopteras in a large chest filled with 

 mould. Concealed in the galleries which it speedily con- 

 structed for its use, it fed upon larvae, and never touched the 

 cereals which we had sown in the earth. Here was a proof 

 that we had to plead the cause of another of man's victims. 



The mole-cricket ejects, when pursued or tormented, a 

 blackish liquid, whose etherealised odour reminds one of the 

 peculiar smell of certain rotten apples. The female, larger 



