OF SELBORNE 243 



greatest occasion. The males only make that shrilling 

 noise perhaps out of rivalry and emulation, as is the case 

 with many animals which exert some sprightly note 

 during their breeding time : it is raised by a brisk 

 friction of one wing against the other. They are solitary 

 beings, living singly male or female, each as it may 

 happen : but there must be a time when the sexes have 

 some intercourse, and then the wings may be useful 

 perhaps during the hours of night. When 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 though 

 they seemed distressed by being taken out of their know- 

 ledge, yet the first that got possession of the chinks would 

 seize upon any that were obtruded 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 jiot always give us pleasure according to 



