240 NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE, 



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 

 tliough thoy seemed distressed by being taken out of their 

 knowledge, yet the first that got possession of the chinks 

 would seize on any other that were intruded upon them 

 with a vast row of serrated fangs. With their strong jaws, 

 toothed like the shears of a lobster'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 them- 

 selves, though armed with such formidable weapons. Of 

 such herbs as grow before the mouths of their burrows 

 they eat indiscriminately, and on a little platform 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 

 sweetness and melody ; nor do harsh sounds always dis- 

 please. 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 10th March the crickets appear at the mouths 



