The nest which the female constructs for her eggs, in the beginning of May, is well worthy of attention. The Rev. Mr. White, of Selborne, tells us that a gardener, at a house where he was on a visit, while mowing grass by the side of a canal, chanced to strike his scythe too deep, and pared off a large piece of turf, laying open to view an interesting scene of domestic economy. There was a pretty chamber dug in the clay, of the form and about the dimensions it would have had if moulded by an egg, the walls being neatly smoothed and polished. In this little cell were deposited about a hundred eggs, of the size and form of caraway comfits, and of a dull tarnished white colour. The eggs were not very deep, but just under a little heap of fresh mould, and within the influence of the sun's heat.[CD] The dull tarnished white colour, however, scarcely agrees with a parcel of these eggs now before us, which are translucent, gelatinous, and greenish. Like the eggs and young of other insects, however, those of the mole-cricket are exposed to depredation, and particularly to the ravages of a black beetle which burrows in similar localities. The mother insect, accordingly, does not think her nest secure till she has defended it, like a fortified town, with labyrinths, intrenchments, ramparts, and covert ways. In some part of these out-works she stations herself as an advanced guard, and when the beetle ventures within her circumvallations, she pounces upon him and kills him. The Field-Cricket. Another insect of this family, the field-cricket (_Acheta campestris_), also forms burrows in the ground, in which it lodges all day, and comes out chiefly about sunset to pipe its evening song. It is so very shy and cautious, however, that it is by no means easy to discover either the insect or its burrow. "The children in France amuse themselves with hunting after the field-cricket; they put into its hole an ant fastened by a long hair, and as they draw it out the cricket does not fail to pursue it, and issue from its retreat. Pliny informs us it might be captured in a much more expeditious and easy manner. If, for instance, a small and slender piece of stick were to be thrust into the burrow, the insect, he says, would immediately get upon it for the purpose of demanding the occasion of the intrusion: whence arose the proverb, _stultior grillo_ (more foolish than a cricket), applied to one who, upon light grounds, provokes his enemy, and falls into the snares which might have been laid to entrap him."[CE]