One to the fields, the other to the hearth,
Both have your sunshine; both, though small, are strong
At your clear hearts; and both were sent on earth
To sing in thoughtful ears this natural song—
Indoors and out, summer and winter, mirth."
So sings Leigh Hunt—a poet, by the way, whose heart was ever open at "the feel of June," and whose genial writings, whether prose or verse, whether delightful essays or melodious songs, should be read in the "happy summer-time," when the idler, reclining on the sunny grass, with the beauty of an English landscape around him, wants the companionship of a gentle spirit and a refined and healthy intellect.
Fig. 63.—The idler, reclining on the sunny grass.
The mole-cricket is, like the grasshopper, a child of summer. It differs, moreover, from the "cricket on the hearth" in lacking those organs of stridulation (excuse the word, kind reader!) which mark "the glad silent moments" with their tricksome (and sometimes inconvenient) tune. Their posterior thighs have an apparent bulging about them, but the legs are very short; so short, that our little friend could not compete with its cousin, the grasshopper, in vaulting exercises, even were it not otherwise prevented by its large abdomen. Nor is it much assisted by its wings, for though they are broad, they are not organised for rapid flight, and the mole-cricket makes but little use of them. Nature, however, has compensated it for all these disadvantages by the gift of those strong, powerful, flexible fore-feet of which I have already spoken.