The female crickets have a long egg-layer, or ovipositor, with which they deposit their eggs, of which each one lays, towards the middle of the summer, about three hundred, in the cracks and crevices of the soil. The larvæ pass the winter in that state, and do not become pupæ and perfect insects till the following summer. Mouffet relates that, in certain regions of Africa, the crickets are objects of commerce. They are brought up in little cages, as we do Canary birds, and sold to the inhabitants, who like to hear their amorous chant. It is said that some tribes eat these insects. In France they are sought after as baits for fishing, and are used also in menageries for feeding small reptiles. Next to _Gryllus_ come the genera _OEcanthus_, insects of the south of Europe, which live on plants, and which one often sees fluttering about flowers; _Sphæria_, which live in ant-hills; _Platydactylus_; and, lastly, the Mole Cricket (_Gryllo-talpa_), whose habits deserve attention for a while. The Mole Crickets are distinguished from all other insects by the structure of their fore-legs, which are wide and indented, in such a manner as to resemble a hand, analogous to that of the mole. This leg betrays the habits of the cricket much better than our hands betray ours. They make use of them, indeed, as spades, with which they hollow out subterranean galleries, and accumulate at the side of the entrance-hole the rubbish thus drawn out. The French name comes from the old French word _courtille_, which means garden. Such places and vineyards are the favourite haunts of these destructive insects. If the Mole Crickets, or _Courtilières_, have spades on their front legs, their hind-legs are very little developed, so that it would be perfectly impossible for them to jump, particularly as their large abdomen would hinder their so doing. The wings are broad, and fold back in the form of a fan; they make little use of them, and it is only at night-fall that the mole cricket is seen to disport himself, describing curves of no great height in the air. It is found principally in cultivated land, kitchen-gardens, nursery gardens, wheat fields, &c., where it scoops out for itself an oval cavity communicating with the surface by a vertical hole (Fig. 306). On this hole abut numerous horizontal galleries, more or less inclined, which permit the insect to gain its retreat by a great many roads, when pursued.