OF SELBORNE^ 
As mole-crickets often infeft gardens by the fides of canals, they 
are unwelcome guefts to the gardener, raifmg up ridges in their 
fubterraneous progrefs, and rendering the walks unfightly. If 
they take to the kitchen quarters, they occafion great damage 
among the plants and roots, by deftroying whole beds of cab- 
bages, young legumes, and flowers. When dug out they 
feem very flow and helplefs, and make no ufe of their wings by 
day ; but at night they come abroad, and make long excurflons, 
as 1 have been convinced by finding ftragglers, in a morning, in 
improbable places. In fine weather, about the middle of Aprils 
and juft at the clofe of day, they begin to folace themfelves with 
a low, dull, jarring note, continued for a long time without 
interruption, and not unlike the chattering of the fern-owl, or 
goat-fucker, but more inward. 
About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once 
an eye-witnefs ; for a gardener at an houfe, where I was on a 
vifit, happening to be mowing, on the 6th of that month, by the 
fide of a canal, his fey the ftruck too deep, pared off' a large piece 
of turf, and laid open to view a curious fcene of domeftic 
ceconomy : 
" — — — — ingentem lato dedit ore feneftram: 
*• Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patefcunt : 
" Apparent — — — penetralia." 
There were many caverns and winding pafifages leading to a 
kind of chamber, neatly fmoothed and rounded, and about the 
fize of a moderate fnuff-box. Within this fecret nurfery v/ere 
depofited near an hundred eggs of a dirty yellow colour, and 
enveloped in a tough fliin, but too lately excluded to contain any 
rudiments of young, being full of a vifcous fubftance. The eggs 
L 1 lay 
