Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/90



THE MOLE CRICKETS The mole crickets (Fig..34) are solemn creatures of the earth. They lire like true moles in burrows underground, usually in wet fields or along streams. Their forefeet are broad and turned outward for digging like the iront feet of moles. But the mole crickets differ from real moles in having wings, and sometimes they leave their burrows at night and fly about, being occasionally attracted to lights. Their front wings are short and lie fiat on the back over the base of the abdomen, but the long hind wings are folded lengthwise over the back and project beyond the tip of the body. Notwithstanding the gloomy nature of their habitat, the male mole crickets sing. Their music, however, is solemn and monotonous, being always a series of loud, deep-toned chirps, like churp, churp, cAurp, repeated very regularly about a hundred rimes a minute and continued indefinitely if the singer is not disturbed. Since the notes are most frequently heard coming from a marshy field or from the edge of a stream, they might be supposed to be those of a small frog. It is diPficult to capture a mole cricket in the act of singing, for he is most likely standing at an opening in his burrow into which he retreats before he is discovered.

THE FIELD CRICKETS

This group of crickets includes Grvllus as its typical member, but entomologists give firstplace to a smaller brown cricket called Nemobms. There are numerous spe- cies of this genus, but a widely distributed one is N. ïitta- tus, the striped ground cricket. This is a little cricket, about three-eighths of an inch in ]ength, brownish in color, with three darker stripes on the abdomen, common in fields and dooryards (Fig. 35)- In the fall the females lay their eggs in the ground with their slender ovipositors (D, E) and the eggs (F) hatch the following summer. The song of the male Nemobius is a continuous twitter-

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