Zoolog;i.-\ NATURAL HISTOKT OF VICTORIA. {Insecta. 



hottest days, and the louduess of then- uoise ; whicli, beginning with 

 a prolonged high-toned whir hke that of a knife-gi'iuder, or the 

 letter R loudly prolonged in a high pitch, continued for a minute 

 or two, breaks into a series of diminuendo " squawks," like that of 

 a frightened duck in a farmyard, loud enough to be heard some 

 hundred yards off, and stunning our ears with the shrilling and 

 squalling. This kept up with " damnable iteration," as Falstaff 

 says, by hundi'eds of individuals all day long, would tax the 

 patience of a saint, if such existed in Australia. One might 

 almost say with Virgil, '•'• Et cantu queruloe rumpent arbusta Ci- 

 cadce"* only to burst the Australian " bush " would be rather 

 too much even for their distracting powers. The oratory of Plato 

 must have been very annoying if as hke the utterance of our 

 insect as it was said to have l)een like that of the Greek Tettix^ 



" HSu£7rrof TlXartav, Koi tetti^iv i(To\a\oQ." 



There is certainly no Australian insect so likely to remind the 

 classic scholar of the studies of his youth, or remind the schoolboy 

 of a greater number of passages in the old Greek and Latin poets 

 than our Cicada. There is scarcely an allusion in the Greek poets, 

 from Homer to Anacreon and Theocritus, referring to the Tettix 

 of their country which could not as well apply to the Victorian 

 Cicada mosrens ; some of Anacreon's odd hyperbolical praises in his 

 43rd Ode being, however, as inapplicable to one as the other. It is 

 very curious to see Virgil's remark, " Raucis sole sub ardenti 

 resonant arbusta Cicadis"f on the Italian Cicada holding good for 

 this Australian one, which seems to sing all the louder the more 

 burning the sun's rays. All the classic jokes about the happiness 

 of these Ijoisterous males because their wives are dumb may be 

 applied by Australian ascetics to our insect, as well as a multitude 

 of other references in the poets of antiquity, showing a repetition 

 or " representation " of the structure and habits of the European 

 Cicada in its commonest Australian representative which is very 

 remarkable. 



The Greeks keeping the Tettix in cages for the sake of their 

 song, and praising their musical performances so highly, one might 



• Gcorg. 3, 327. t Hue. 2, 12. 



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