296 3 THE INSECT WORLD. 
The Mole Crickets are distinguished from all other insects by 
the structure of their fore-légs, which are wide and indented, in 
such a manner as to resemble a hand, analogous to that of the 
mole. This hand betrays its habits much better than our hands 
betray ours. One need not be much of a fortune-teller to read on 
it its digging habits. They make use of their hands, indeed, as 
spades, with which they hollow out subterranean galleries, and 
accumulate at the side of the entrance-hole the rubbish thus 
drawn out. Their French name comes from the old French word 
courtille, which means garden. It reminds one that these are 
the favourite haunts of these destructive insects. 
If the Mole Crickets, or Courtiliéres, have spades to their front 
legs, their hind-legs are very little developed, so that it would 
be perfectly impossible for them to jump, particularly as their 
large abdomen would hinder their so doing. The wings are broad, 
and fold back in the form of a fan; they make little use of 
them, and it is only at night-fall that the mole cricket is seen 
to disport himself, describing curves of no great height in the 
air. It is found principally in cultivated land, kitchen-gardens, 
nursery gardens, wheat fields, &c., where it scoops out for itself 
an oval cavity communicating with the surface by a vertical hole 
(fig. 306). On this hole abut numerous horizontal galleries, 
more or less inclined, which permit the insect to gain its retreat 
by a great many roads when pursued. 
It is easy to understand that an insect which undermines land 
in this way must cause great damage to cultivation. Whether 
the crops serve it for food or not, they are not the less destroyed 
by its underground burrowings. Lands infested by the mole 
ericket are recognisable by the colour of the vegetation, which 
is yellow and withered; and the rubbish which these miners 
heap up at the side of the openings leading to their galleries, 
resembling mole-hills in miniature, betrays their presence to the 
farmer. ‘To destroy them, they pour water or other liquids into 
their nests, or else they bury, at different distances, vessels filled 
with water, in which they drown themselves. From the month 
of April the males betake themselves to the entrance of their 
burrows and make their cry of appeal. Their notes are slow, 
vibrating, and monotonous, and repeated for a long time without 
