THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE. 213 
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 interruption, and not unlike the chattering 
of the fern-owl, or goatsucker, but more inward. 
About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was 
once an eye-witness ; for a gardener at a house where I was on 
a visit, happening to be mowing, on the sixth 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 : — 
* A yawning breach of monstrous size he made : 
The inmost house is now to light displayed : 
The admitted light with sudden lustre falls 
On the long galleries and the splendid halls.” 
DRYDEN. 
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 a hundred eggs of a dirty yellow color, 
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-moved mould, like 
that which is raised by ants. 
When mole-crickets fly they move, 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 
