354 



NATURAL HISTORY 



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 hun- 

 dred eggs of a dirty yellow colour, and enveloped in a 

 tough skin, but too lately excluded to contain any rudi- 

 ments 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 rumi- 

 nate or chew the cud like many quadrupeds 2 ! 



2 In the Hunterian Collection are preparations of the singularly com- 

 plex stomach here alluded to as it exists in the mole cricket (No. 611) 

 and in the locust (Nos. 474,610.) The structure is similar in both, as to 

 the number of cavities, but differs in their relative positions. The Grst 

 cavity, or crop, is formed in the locust by a gradual dilatation of the 

 gullet; but in the mole cricket it is appended, like the crop of a grani- 

 M irons bird, to one side of the gullet, communicating with it by a lateral 

 opening. The canal which intervenes between the crop and gizzard is 

 relatively longer in the mole cricket than in the locust. Its gizzard is 

 small, but armed internally with longitudinal rows of complex teeth. 

 Two large lateral pouches open into the lower part, or termination, of the 

 gizzard. The analogy between this digestive apparatus and that of the 

 ruminants is vague, and does not extend beyond the number of cavities. 

 It is more like that of the bird ; and since the comminuting or masti- 

 cating organs are situated, as in the feathered class, in the stomach, it 

 cannot be supposed that the food is again returned to the mouth, where 

 it has already received all the division which the oral instruments can 

 effect. R. O. 



