The most important part of the work is now completed.  Once the burrow has attained a depth of a couple of inches, it forms a sufficient shelter for the needs of the moment.  The rest will be the work of time; a labour resumed at will, for a short time daily.  The burrow will be made deeper and wider as the growth of the inmate and the inclemency of the season demand.  Even in winter, if the weather is mild, and the sun smiles upon the threshold of his dwelling, one may sometimes surprise the Cricket thrusting out small quantities of loosened earth, a sign of enlargement and of further burrowing.  In the midst of the joys of spring the cares of the house still continue; it is constantly restored and perfected until the death of the occupant.

April comes to an end, and the song of the Cricket commences.  At first we hear only timid and occasional solos; but very soon there is a general symphony, when every scrap of turf has its performer.  I am inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring.  In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark, which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music, to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias upon the plain below.  From the ground the chorus of the Crickets replies.  It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in its very simplicity, with the rustic gaiety of a world renewed!  It is the hosanna of the awakening, the alleluia of the germinating seed and the sprouting blade.  To which of the two performers should the palm be given?  I should award it to the Cricket; he triumphs by force of numbers and his never-ceasing note.  The lark hushes her song, that the blue-grey fields of lavender, swinging their aromatic censers before the sun, may hear the Cricket alone at his humble, solemn celebration.

But here the anatomist intervenes, roughly demanding of the Cricket:  “Show me your instrument, the source of your music!” Like all things of real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that of the locusts; there is the toothed fiddlestick and the vibrating tympanum.

The right wing-cover overlaps the left and almost completely covers it, except for the sudden fold which encases the insect’s flank.  This arrangement is the reverse of that exhibited by the green grasshopper, the Decticus, the Ephippigera, and their relations.  The Cricket is right-handed, the others left-handed.  The two wing-covers have the same structure.  To know one is to know the other.  Let us examine that on the right hand.

It is almost flat on the back, but suddenly folds over at the side, the turn being almost at right angles.  This lateral fold encloses the flank of the abdomen and is covered with fine oblique and parallel nervures.  The powerful nervures of the dorsal portion of the wing-cover are of the deepest black, and their general effect is that of a complicated design, not unlike a tangle of Arabic caligraphy.