NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 241 



They are solitary beings, living singly male and female, each as it 

 may happen ; but there must be a time when the sexes have some 

 intercourse, and then the wings may be useful perhaps during the 

 hours of night. When the males meet they will fight fiercely, as I 

 found by some which I put into the crevices of a dry stone wall, 

 where I should have been glad to have made them settle. For 

 though they seemed distressed by being taken out of their know- 

 ledge, yet the first that got possession of the chinks would seize on 

 any other that were intruded upon them with avast row of serrated 

 fangs. With their strong jaws, toothed like the shears of a lob- 

 ster's claws, they perforate and round their curious regular cells, 

 having no fore-claws to dig, like the mole-cricket. When taken in 

 hand I could not but wonder that they never offered to defend 

 themselves, though armed with such formidable weapons. Of such 

 herbs as grow before the mouths of their burrows they eat indis- 

 criminately, and on a little pjatform which they make just by, they 

 drop their dung ; and never, in the day time, seem to stir more 

 than two or three inches from home. Sitting in the entrance of 

 their caverns they chirp all night as well as day from the middle of 

 the month of May to the middle of July ; and in hot weather, 

 when they are most vigorous, they make the hills echo, and in the 

 stiller hours of darkness may be heard to a considerable distance. 

 In the beginning of the season their notes are more faint and 

 inward ; but become louder as the summer advances, and so die 

 away again by degrees. 



Sounds do not always give us pleasure according to their sweet- 

 ness and melody ; nor do harsh sounds always displease. We are 

 more apt to be captivated or disgusted with the associations which 

 they promote than with the notes themselves. Thus the shrilling 

 of the field-cricket, though sharp and stridulous, yet marvellously 

 delights some hearers, filling their minds with a train of summer 

 ideas of everything that is rural, verdurous, and joyous. 



About the loth of March the crickets appear at the mouths of 

 their cells, which they then open and bore, and shape very ele- 

 gantly. All that ever I have seen at that season were in their pupa 

 state, and had only the rudiments of wings, lying under a skin or 

 coat, which must be cast before the insect can arrive at its perfect 

 state ; * from whence I should suppose that the old ones of last 



* We have observed that they cast these skins in April, which are then seen lying at the 

 mouths of their holes. 



