How diversified are the modes of life, not only of incongruous, but even
of congenerous animals; and yet their specific distinctions are not more
various than their propensities. Thus, while the field-cricket delights
in sunny dry banks, and the house-cricket rejoices amidst the glowing
heat of the kitchen hearth or oven, the _gryllus gryllo talpa_ (the mole-
cricket), haunts moist meadows, and frequents the sides of ponds and
banks of streams, performing all its functions in a swampy wet 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, 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 goat-sucker, 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 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 a 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!