About the beginning of May they lay their eggs, as I was once an
eye-witness: for a gardener at an 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 oeconomy:
... 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
an 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.
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