120 WOODLAND IDYLS. 



seeking earth-worms we uncovered a half dozen 

 or more along the side of the spring run. Gog- 

 gle-eyes and sunfish appear to be very fond of 

 them biting the instant they are seen. Just now 

 I hear a male from somewhere in the bank be- 

 fore the tent, reiterating in ceaseless monotone 

 its chirping love-call. Loud, clear, resounding 

 it comes from a cavity in the boggy earth where 

 the musician is resting. In the moist sand bars 

 their runways, similar to those of a mole but not 

 one-tenth as wide, can often be traced for a 

 dozen rods or more. On one occasion in July 

 the turning over of a chunk on the margin of a 

 lake in northern Indiana disclosed a cup-shaped 

 cavity in the earth in which appeared to be sev- 

 eral hundred of the young crickets, crawling 

 and squirming over one another like a mass of 

 worms. They were less than a quarter of an 

 inch in length and were probably not long 

 hatched from an egg colony laid beneath the 

 chunk. Many of the young had I often caught 

 in small-rneshed seines but never before had I 

 seen them massed together in such numbers. 



We of the great cities think too little of the 

 farmer who controls and tends the broad acres 

 of the country. Day in and year out by his 

 honest toil he tickles the earth's crust that it 

 may yield the more freely its stored nourish- 

 ment unto the plant cells in whose laboratories 

 it is fitted for our use. We seldom think of that 



