246 
THE NATURAL HISTORY 
[LETT. 
wings by day ; but at iiigbt they conie abroad, and make long 
excursions, as I have been convinced by finding stragglers, in a 
inorning, 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 interruption, and not unlike the chattering 
of the fern-owl, or goat-sucker, but more inward. 
About the beginning of INIay they lay their eggs, as I was 
once an eye-v/itness : for a gardener at a house where I w^as 
on a visit, happening to be mowing, on the 6tli of that month, 
by the side of a canal, his scythe struck too deep, pared off a 
large piece of turf, and laid open to view a curious scene of 
domestic economy : 
" — — — — ingeiiteni lato dedit ore fenestram : 
Apparet domns iiitns, et atria longa patescunt : 
Apparent — — — penetraUa." 
(ViRG. yEn. ii. 481—483.) 
'* A yawning breach of monstrous size lie made : 
The inmost house is now to light displayed : 
Tlie admitted light with sudden lustre falls 
On the long galleries and the splendid halls." 
(Dryden.) 
There were many caverns and winding passages leading to 
a kind of chamber, neatly smoothed and rounded, and about 
the size of a moderate snuff-box. Within this secret nursery 
were deposited near a hundred eggs of a dirty yellow colour, 
and enveloped in a tough skin, but too lately excluded to 
contain any rudiments of young, being full of a viscous sub- 
stance. The eggs lay but shallow, and within the influence of 
the sun, just under a little heap of fresh-moved mould, like 
that which is raised by ants. 
When mole-crickets fly they move cursu undoso, rising and 
falling in curves, like the other species mentioned before. In 
different parts of this kingdom people call them fen-crickets, 
churr-worms, and eve-churrs, all very apposite names. 
Anatomists, who have examined the intestines of these insects, 
astonish me with their accounts; for tliey say that, from the 
