oughs.' * 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 fined 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. (* Exod. viii. 3.)
Letter XLVIII To The Honourable Daines Barrington
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 gryllotalpa (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
