176 
NATURAL HISTORY OP SELBORNE. 
eye-witness; for a gardener at an house where I was on a visit, 
happening to be mowing, on the 6th 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 : — 
*' Ingentem lato dedit ore fenestram : 
Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt : 
Apparent penetralia." 
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 
an 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 substance. The eggs lay but shallow, and within the 
influence of the sun, just under a little heap of fresh-mowed 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 they say that, from the structure, 
position, and number of their stomachs, or maws, there seems to be 
good reason to suppose that this and the two former species ruminate 
or chew the cud like many quadrupeds ! 
LETTEE XLIX. 
* 
TO THE SAME. 
Selborne, May 7th, 1779. 
It is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention to 
the ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust the 
subject : new occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries are kept 
alive. 
In the last week of last month five of those most rare birds, too 
uncommon to have obtained an English name, but known to naturalists 
by the terms of himantopus, or loripes, and charadrius liimantopus^ 
were shot upon the verge of Frinsham-pond, a large lake belonging to 
the Bishop of Winchester, and lying between Woolmer-forest and the 
town of Farnham, in the county of Surrey. The pond keeper says 
there were three brace in the flock : but, that after he had satisfied his 
curiosity, he suffered the sixth to remain unmolested. One of these 
specimens I procured, and found the length of the legs to be so extra- 
ordinary, that, at first sight, one might have supposed the shanks had 
* '.^ Himantopedes loripedes quidam, quibus serpendo ingredi natura est." 
tft,oe.vro'srou<;, name of a tribe of iEthiopians, used by Pliny, 
Himantopus melanopterus of modem ornithologists. It has been knOTrn as an 
occasional visitant to Britain since the time of Sibbald, but may yet be considered 
as one of our rarest species. We have no good detailed account of its habits. 
