NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 173 



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 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 themselves, 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 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 10th of March the crickets appear at the mouths of their 

 cell, which they then open and bore, and shape very elegantly. 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 year do not always survive the 

 winter. In August their holes begin to be obliterated, and the insects 

 are seen no more till spring. 



Not many summers ago I endeavoured to transplant a colony to the 

 terrace in my garden, by boring deep holes in the sloping turf. The 

 new inhabitants stayed some time, and fed and sung ; but wandered 

 away by degrees, and were heard at a farther distance every morning, 

 so that it appears that on this emergency they made use of their wings 

 in attempting to return to the spot from which they were taken. 



One of these crickets when confined in a paper cage and set in the 

 sun, and supplied with plants moistened with water, will feed and 

 thrive, and become so merry and loud as to be irksome in the same 

 room where a person is sitting ; if the plants are not wetted it will die. 



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

 lying at the mouths of their holes. 



