ANT COMMUNITIES 



other Japanese towns (Fig. 65). To that remarkable 

 people the shrilling of crickets and grasshoppers seems 

 to be as sweet a sound as the song of canaries to us. 

 One who deems this a barbarous fancy may be remind- 

 ed that the men of classical Greece held the cicada to 

 be sacred to the deitv of music. 



V 



One finds such insect musicians as charm the Japanese 

 everywhere around him in the fields during late summer 

 and early autumn. Sitting here, writing, on the open 

 porch of his country home, the author hears the notes 

 of hosts of insects beating upon the hot noon air. Wild 

 bees, yellow-jackets, brown wasps, and blue mud-daubers 

 keep up a ceaseless hum as they hover over a flowering 



Fig. 65 JAPANESE CAGES FOR STRIDULATING INSECTS 



vine that drapes and shades the railing. Just overhead 

 hangs a fragrant clematis, among whose leaves a tree- 

 cricket plays hide-and-seek with the writer, and inter- 

 jects an occasional high-keyed Krea k I kr-reak! Out of 



142 



