180 HOMES WITHOUT HANDS. 



posits its eggs, which are generally from two to three hundred in 

 number, and yellowish in color. As the chamber lies so near the 

 surface of the ground, the genial sunbeams are able to raise the 

 temperature sufficient for the hatching of the eggs, which in due 

 course of time produce the tiny young, little white creatures, very 

 like the parent in shiJ^e, except that they have no wings. They 

 do not attain the perfect state until the third year. The reader 

 will at once see that this chamber is analogous to the cavities 

 made by the Dusky Ant, which has been described on page 168. 



It is a rather remarkable fact that one species of this family 

 burrows, not into earth, but into wood. Its form very much re- 

 sembles that of the wood-burrowing beetles, the body being long 

 and cylindrical, the legs very short and fitting into cavities at the 

 sides of the body. Its scientific name is Oylindrodes Campbellii. 

 This is one of the oddest-looking insects that can be conceived, 

 and really bears ,no small resemblance to three inches of a black- 

 lead pencil. 



.The black -bodied Field - cricket {Acheta campestris) is also 

 one of the burrowing Orthoptera, working tunnels of consider- 

 able depth, and living in them during the day. By night it 

 comes out of its home and sits at the mouth, chirping away for 

 hours together. The banks at the side of a road or lane are 

 favorite resorts of the Field-cricket, and I have noticed the insect 

 peculiarly plentiful in the roads and lanes between Eamsgate and 

 Margate. Like the mole-cricket, it is of a very combative nature, 

 and may be drawn out of its tunnel by the simple process of push- 

 ing a grass-stem down the burrow. It is said that in France it is 

 captured in rather a curious manner, an ant being tied to a thread 

 and dropped into the hole. Being partly carnivorous, the cricket 

 seizes the ant for the purpose of eating it, and is immediately 

 dragged out of its house by the thread. 



In the accompanying illustration is shown one of the well- 

 known grasshoppers in the act of depositing its eggs. Its popu- 

 lar name is the Wart-biter, and its scientific title Oryllus [or 

 -DeciJiczw] verrucivorus, this name being given to it because its bite 

 is thought to have the property of removing warts. 



If the reader will refer to the illustration, he will see that the 

 end of the body is furnished with a long, double-bladed instru- 

 ment, technically called the ovipositor, or egg -layer. This cu- 

 rious instrument, which is of course only found in the female in- 



