NATURAL HIST011Y OF SELBORNE. 175 



destroyed by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies. 

 In families at such times they are like Pharaoh's plague of frogs, " in 

 their bedchambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in 

 their kneading troughs." * Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a 

 brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth crickets, and, playing 

 with them as they do with mice, devour them. Crickets may be 

 destroyed, like wasps, by phials half filled with beer, or any liquid, and 

 set in their haunts ; for being always eager to drink, they will crowd in 

 till the bottles are full. 



LETTEE XLYIII. 



TO THE SAME. 



SELBOKNE. 



How diversified are the modes of life not only of incongruous but 

 even of congenerous animals ; and yet their specific distinctions are not 

 more various than their propensities. Thus, while the field-cricket 

 delights in sunny dry banks, and the house-cricket rejoices amidst the 

 glowing heat of the kitchen hearth or oven, the Gryllus gryllo talpa 

 (the mole-cricket), haunts moist meadows, and frequents the sides of 

 ponds and banks of streams, performing all its functions in a 

 swampy wet soil. With a pair of fore-feet, curiously adapted to the 

 purpose, it burrows and works under ground like the mole, raising a 

 ridge as it proceeds, but seldom throwing up hillocks. 



As mole-crickets often infest gardens by the sides of canals, they are 

 unwelcome guests to the gardener, raising up ridges in their subter- 

 raneous progress, and 

 rendering the walks 

 unsightly. If they take 

 to the kitchen quarters 

 they occasion great 

 damage among the 

 plants and roots, by 

 destroying whole beds 

 of cabbages, young 

 legumes, and flowers. 

 When dug out they 



seem very slow and MOLE-CRICKET. 



helpless, and make 



no use of their wings by day ; but at night they come abroad, and 

 make long excursions, as I have been convinced by finding stragglers, 

 in a morning, in improbable places. In fine weather, about the middle 

 of April, and just at the close of day, they begin to solace themselves 

 with a low, dull, jarring note, continued for a long time without inter- 

 ruption, and not unlike the chattering of the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, 

 but more inward. 



About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once an 



* Bxod. viii. 3. 



