205 
anatomy of the mole-cricket 
wings are folded in a very curious manner, while in the im- 
perfect insect they are always open. 
During the month of June or July they cast their skin for 
the fifth and last time ; after which the wings acquire a per- 
manent character, and the insect becomes capable of pro- 
pagating its species. 
Rosel says that he himself never dissected a mole-crcket ; 
but reports, on the authority of others, that its stomach re- 
sembles that of the locust, represented in his ninth plate of 
the series of that tribe of insects. I may here add, from my 
own observation, that it very closely resembles that of the 
gryllus viridissimus, and also that of a species of gryllus 
preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, which answers to 
the pneumora of Lamarck : it also somewhat resembles 
that of a locust, marked 614 in the Hunterian collection; 
and, still more, that of the Cape grasshopper, engraved' in 
the 84th plate of the first part of Sir E. Home's Comparative 
Anatomy. 
It appears from Rosel's account, that while very young, 
these insects are gregarious, but not afterwards ; that they are 
usually found in the vicinity of meadows and of fields of corn, 
particularly of barley ; to which they are very detrimental 
by feeding on the roots, and thus intercepting the due nou- 
rishment of the plants themselves. I have no doubt of the 
general accuracy of the foregoing remarks of Rosel, and have 
little to add to his account of the natural history of this in- 
sect. I have hitherto met with the mole-cricket in one situ- 
ation only ; namely, in some peat-bogs, at the distance of a 
few miles to the west of Oxford. In the neighbourhood of 
these peat-bogs the insects are familiarly known by the name 
