beds, and in their ovens, and in their kneading-troughs1.' Their shrilling noise is occasioned by a brisk attrition of their wings. Cats catch hearth crickets, and, playing with them as they do with mice, devour them. Crickets may be destroyed, like wasps, by phials half filled with beer, or any liquid, and set in their haunts; for, being always eager to drink, they will crowd in till the bottles are full 2.

LETTER XLVIII.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE.

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 Gryllotalpa1, or 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

1 Exod. viii. 3.

2 Some additional particulars respecting the house cricket will be found in the Observations on various parts of Nature, printed in a subsequent part of this volume.-E. T. B.

1 1 [Gryllotalpa vulgaris, LATR.]

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 intùs, et atria longa patescunt:

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 moved 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?!

2 In the Hunterian Collection are preparations of the singularly complex stomach here alluded to as it exists in the mole cricket (No. 611) and in the locust (Nos. 474, 610.) The structure is similar in both, as to the number of cavities, but differs in their relative positions. The first cavity, or crop, is formed in the locust by a gradual dilatation of the gullet; but in the mole cricket it is appended, like the crop of a granivorous bird, to one side of the gullet, communicating with it by a lateral opening. The canal which intervenes between the crop and gizzard is relatively longer in the mole cricket than in the locust. Its gizzard is small, but armed internally with longitudinal rows of complex teeth. Two large lateral pouches open into the lower part, or termination, of the gizzard. The analogy between this digestive apparatus and that of the ruminants is vague, and does not extend beyond the number of cavities. It is more like that of the bird; and since the comminuting or masticating organs are situated, as in the feathered class, in the stomach, it cannot be supposed that the food is again returned to the mouth, where it has already received all the division which the oral instruments can effect.-R. O.

LETTER XLIX.

TO THE SAME.

SELBORNE, May 7, 1779.

Ir is now more than forty years that I have paid some attention to the ornithology of this district, without being able to exhaust the subject: new occurrences still arise as long as any inquiries are kept alive.

In the last week of last month five of those most rare birds, too uncommon to have obtained an English name, but known to naturalists by the terms of Himantopus, or Loripes, and Charadrius Himantopus1, were shot upon the verge of Frinsham Pond, a large lake belonging to the Bishop of Winchester, and lying between Wolmer Forest, and the town of Farnham, in the county of Surrey. The pond-keeper says there were three brace in the flock; but that, after he had satisfied his curiosity, he suffered the sixth to remain unmolested. One of these specimens I procured, and found the length of the legs to be so extraordinary, that, at first sight, one might have supposed the shanks had been fastened on to impose on the credulity of the beholder: they were legs in caricatura; and had we seen such proportions on a Chinese or Japan screen we should have made large allowances for the fancy of the draughtsman. These birds are of the plover family, and might with propriety be called the stilt plovers. Brisson, under that idea, gives them the apposite name of L'Echasse. My specimen, when drawn and stuffed with pepper, weighed only four ounces and a quarter; though the naked part of the thigh measured three inches and a half, and the legs four inches and a half. Hence we

may safely assert that these birds exhibit, weight for inches, incomparably the greatest length of legs of any known bird. The flamingo, for instance, is one of the most long-legged birds, and yet it bears no manner of

proportion to the Himantopus; for a cock flamingo weighs, at an average, about four pounds avoirdupois; and his legs and thighs measure usually about twenty inches. But four pounds are fifteen times and a fraction more than four ounces and one quarter; and if four ounces and a quarter have eight inches of legs, four pounds must have one hundred and twenty inches and a fraction of legs; viz. somewhat more than ten feet; such a monstrous proportion as the world never saw! If you should try the experiment in still larger birds, the disparity would still increase. It must be matter of great curiosity to see the stilt plover move; to observe how it can wield such a length of lever with such feeble muscles as the thighs seem to be furnished with. At best one should expect it to be but a bad