INSECT INSTEUMENTALISTS ALLAED 565 



branes, made to vibrate rapidly at will by a very powerful muscula- 

 ture. Only to the extent that it employs an internal device does this 

 method resemble the vocal efforts of the birds. The musical appa- 

 ratus of the cicada appears to represent the most complicated struc- 

 ture which the forces of life have evolved for sound production in 

 the insect kingdom. Nature is frequently seen to run riot with this 

 tendency or with that, specializing for ages upon bill, feather, or 

 claw, iDroducing organisms with marvelous and grotesque adorn- 

 ments upon every feature, and so in this instance, in which she 

 decided to expend the forces of her inventive genius upon the music 

 boxes of the cicadas. These are complicated in the extreme. Little 

 was knoAvn of their structures until the great French naturalist 

 Reaumur, as far back as 1740, gave his scrutinizing attention to their 

 marvelous specializations, and little has been added to the under- 

 standing of it all since his day. The principle of the musical organ 

 is that of the drum, the vibrant, membranous head of which is 

 snapped or sprung with great frequency to produce the loud metallic 

 sounds. Nature appears here to have seen potentialities for her 

 infinite ingenuity and genius and to have settled down in serious 

 contemplation to equip the cicadas with marvelous cymbals. The 

 sounding drums or tympani are ribbed to make them strong and 

 elastic to withstand the terrific energies of vibration to which they 

 are constantly subjected. Not content with this, the forces of life 

 even specialized in spacious resonant air chambers, to increase and 

 transmit the sound, reflect it to the best advantage, or change its 

 volume at will. It is all a matter of superspecialization, it would 

 seem, and to what end? For some reason the forces of life decided 

 to make the cicadas artists, geniuses in their line, in some queer 

 organic localization of the molecular forces and impulses of life of 

 which we know nothing. 



Our more famaliar insect sounds of the summertime are made by 

 members of the order Orthoptera, including the crickets, grasshop- 

 pers, katydids, walking sticks, roaches, mantids, and others of the 

 order. It is in this group that the musical impulse has somehow 

 become a great impelling motive in their existence. Not all the fami- 

 lies of this order have specialized in music, however, for the man- 

 tids, walking sticks, and roaches are little given to the production of 

 sound for sound's sake. It is among the grasshoppers, katydids, and 

 crickets that a veritable sensitized ear for music has developed. All 

 these singing creatures wear their musical instruments externally on 

 their legs or upon the wing covers of their backs. 



The music is instrumental; the musicians are with few exceptions 

 genuine violinists, or xylophone players. The more lowly grasshop- 

 pers may produce their music while flying over the fields, while hover- 



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