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 tuif, and laid open to view a curious scene of domestic economy:—
"Ingentem lato dedit ore fenestram:
Apparet domus intus, et atria longa patescunt:
Apparentpenetralia."
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 panics.
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!1
NOTE TO LETTER XLVIII.
1 The use of this peculiar formation of the stomach of the cricket (and the locust has the same peculiarity) is not yet clear to naturalists, but it seems quite clear that it does not chew the cud, and that it would be impossible for the food to be returned for that purpose.
