78 NEST OF THE MOLE-CKJCKET. 



cases and chest. His usual food consists of potatoes, with roots 

 of grass and other plants, varied, probably, with the partially 

 carnivorous appetite of his family, by underground insects, as 

 well as flies. The nests of these crickets consist of subterranean 

 chambers, situate most frequently near the banks of rivers. 

 One of these, constructed near the banks of a canal, and laid 

 open by the deep incision of a mower's scythe, is described by 

 White of Selborne as "a pretty chamber dug in clay, of the 

 form and about the size it would have been if moulded by 

 an egg, the walls being neatly smoothed and polished. In this 

 little cell were deposited about a hundred eggs of the size and 

 form of caraway comfits, and of a dull, tarnished white colour. 

 The eggs were not very deep, but just under a little heap of 

 fresh mould, and within the influence of the sun's heat." Mr. 

 Bennie notices a difference of colour between the above and 

 some eggs of the same insect in his possession, which were 

 " translucent, gelatinous, and greenish." He observes, further, 

 that, "like the eggs and young of other insects, those of the 

 mole-cricket are exposed to depredation, and particularly to 

 the ravages of a black beetle, which burrows in similar locali- 

 ties." The mother cricket, therefore, defends her nest " like a 

 fortified town, with labyrinths, intrenchments, ramparts, and 

 covered ways. In some part of these outworks she stations her- 

 self as an advanced guard, and, when the beetle ventures within 

 her circumvallations, she pounces upon him and kills him."* 



* " Insect Architecture." 



