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Psyche 1:105, 1874.

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PSYCHE.
ORGAN OF
THE CAMBRIDGE ENTOMOLOGICAL CLUB
EDITED BY B. PICKMAN MANN.
Vol. I.] Cambridge, Mass., October, 1875. [No. 18. The Chirp of the Mole-cricket.
The common mole-cricket of the United States (Gryllotalpa borealis Burm.) usually commences its daily chirp at about four o'clock in the afternoon, but stridulates most actively at about dusk. On a cloudy day, however, it may be heard as early as two or three o'clock ; this recognition of the weather is rather remarkable in a burrowing insect, and the more so since it does -
not appear to come to the surface to stridulate, but remains in its burrow usually an inch below the surface of the ground. The European mole-cricket is said to chirp both within its bur- row and at its mouth (plerumque sul terrd, Fischer says), and it may be that our species sometimes seeks the air in chanting; but the chirp, as far as I have heard it, always has a uniformly subdued tone, as if produced in some hidden recess. Fischer says that the European species, which is twice as large as ours, cannot be heard more than from one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet (ultra spatiurn 20-30 passuum). Ours, when certainly beneath the surface, is easily distinguished at a dis- tance of five rods; and one would presume that it could be heard, if above ground, nearly twice as far away. Its chirp is a guttural sort of sound, like grit or pi-&, re- peated in a trill indefinitely, but seldom for more than two or three minutes, and often for a less time. It is pitched at two
octaves above middle C, and the notes are usually repeated at the rate of about 130 or 135 per minute; sometin~es, when many are singing, even as rapidly as 150 per minute. Often,



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