80 TIMES AND SEASONS. 



engine ; but I was informed it was a noise caused by a 

 beetle that is peculiar to Tobago. It is nearly the size 

 of a man's hand, and fixing itself against a tree, it com- 

 mences a kind of drumming noise, which gradually 

 quickens to a whistle, and at length increases in shrillness 

 and intensity, till it almost equals a railroad-whistle. It 

 was so loud that, when standing full twenty yards from 

 the tree where it was in operation, the sound was so 

 shrill, that you had to raise your voice considerably to 

 address your neighbour. The entomological productions 

 of the tropics struck me as being quite as astonishing in 

 size and nature as the botanical or zoological wonders. 

 There is another beetle, called the razor-grinder, that 

 imitates the sound of a knife-grinding machine so exactly, 

 that it is impossible to divest one's self of the belief that 

 one is in reality listening to some ' needy knife-grinder/ 

 who has wandered out to the tropical wilds on spec.^' * 



This latter was pretty certainly not a beetle proper, but 

 a Cicada,-f an insect of another order; remarkable for 

 its musical powers, even from the times of classical an- 

 tiquity. These are doubtless sexual sounds ; the sere- 

 nades of the wooing cavaliers, who, as Mr Kirby humor- 

 ously says, — 



" Formosam resonare docent Amaryllida sylvas." 



A friend who has resided in Burmah informs me that 



* Sullivan's Rambles in North and South Amenca, p. 307. 

 'i Dr Hancock has made out the " razor-grinder " of Surinam to be 

 the Cicada clarkona. 



