NATURAL HISTORY 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 j&Ued with beer, or any liquid, and 
set in their haunts ; for being always eager to drink, they will crowd iu 
till the bottles are full. 
LETTEE XLYIII. 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne. 
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 
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 
* Exod. viii. 3. 
