202 THE 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 an 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 Jen-crickets, churr- 

 rvorms, 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 ! 1 



LETTER XLIX. 



TO THE SAME. 



Selborne, May 7, 1779. 



IT is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention 

 to the ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust 

 the subject : new occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries 

 are kept alive. 



In the last week of last month five of those most rare birds, 

 too uncommon to have obtained an English name, but known to 

 naturalists by the terms of himantopus, or loripes, and charadrius 

 himantopus? were shot upon the verge of Frinskam-pond, a large 

 lake belonging to the bishop of Winchester, and lying between 

 Wolmer-forest, and the town of Farnham, in the county of Surrey. 

 The pond keeper says there were three brace in the flock ; but 

 that, after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suffered the sixth to 

 remain unmolested. One of these specimens I procured, and 



1 [The only foundation for the supposition that crickets and mole-crickets 

 ruminate is that, like many other insects, they have a gizzard, set with hard ridges 

 or teeth, behind the crop.] 



2 [The black- winged stilt, an uncommon visitor to this country.] 



