756 
MOLE CRICKET. 
thirsty, but very voracious, for they will eat the scummings of pots, 
yeast, salt, and crumbs of bread, and any kitchen offals and sweep- 
ings. In the summer we have observed them to fly, when it became 
dusk, out of the windows, and over the neighbouring roofs. This feat 
of activity accounts for the sudden manner in which they often leave 
their haunts, as it does for the method by which they come to houses 
W'here they were not known before. It is remarkable, that many 
sorts of insects seem never to use their wings but when they have a 
mind to shift their quarters and settle new colonies. When in the 
air, they move up and down in waves or curves, like woodpeckers, 
opening and shutting their wings at every stroke, and so are always 
rising or sinking. 
When they increase to a great degree, as they did once in the 
house where I am now writing, they become noisome pests, flying into 
the candle, and dashing against people’s faces ; but they may be 
blasted by gunpowder discharged into their crevices and crannies. 
In families, at such times, they are like Pharaoh’s plague of frogs, in 
their bed-chambers, and upon their beds, and in their ovens, and in 
their kneading troughs. Their sharp shrill noise is occasioned by a 
brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth-crickets, and, play- , 
ing with them as they do wdth mice, devour them. Crickets may be 
destroyed like wasps, with phials half filled with beer, or any liquid, 
and set in their haunts; for ahvays being eager to drink, they will 
crowd in till the bottles are full. A popular prejudice, however, 
frequently prevents their being driven away and destroyed; as some 
people imagine that their presence brings a kind of good luck to the 
house while they are in it, and think it would be hazardous to destroy 
them.” 
Mole Cricket. 
This insect haunts moist meadows, and frequents the sides of 
ponds and banks of streams, performing all its functions in a swampy 
W'et 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 subterraneous 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. In 
fine weather, about the middle of April, at the close of the day they 
begin to solace themselves with a low dull jarring note, continued 
for along time without interruption, 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 Mr. Whyte informs us, who was once 
an eye-witness ; “ for a gardener, at a house where he was on a visit, 
happening to he mowing on the sixth of that month by the side of a 
canal, his scythe struck too deep, pared off a piece of turf, and laid 
