IlSrSECT INSTRUMENTALISTS ALLAED 567 



explain this scientific theories have been hiboriously evolved upon the 

 basis of sexual utility; light was made the means of attracting the 

 males and females to each other through their esthetic appreciations 

 of colors. These finespun theories now show many weaknesses. In 

 reality we know nothing about the impulses back of it all. There 

 are, however, strange analogies betw^een these organic treatments of 

 sound and light. The males among insects are generally the musical 

 ones; they are the ones that have most aptly seized upon the sound 

 waves and used them in varied patterns of rhythm and tone. Like- 

 wise with light ; it is the males which have usually analyzed it most 

 carefully and made its primary colors into the most varied and 

 beautiful patterns. Strange organic laws are here at work, of 

 which men have little knowledge. 



We speak of the garrulous human in our midst as an egotistical 

 fellow. If katj'dids and crickets were judged on this basis they 

 would be the most egotistical creatures on earth, obsessed as no 

 others with the sounds of their own wings. Perchance some degree 

 of elemental egotism and love of noisy self-expression may actually 

 be the motives of their lives. Perchance back of it all there is the 

 mood of social contact, or of abiding companionship in the adver- 

 tising noise of their fellows, just as we ourselves feel the thrill of 

 noisy crowds. Perchance it is the elemental impulse of pure art, 

 the love of sound, tone, rhythm of music in some manifestation. We 

 know nothing with any certainty, however, about the impulses back 

 of it all. I have heard the snowy tree cricket chirp at the rate of 

 about ninety times per minute all night long. Think what that 

 means; 5,400 chirps per hour, G-i,800 chirps in a 12-hour night, nearly 

 4,000,000 chirps in a period of CO days, demanding the muscular 

 energy of 16,000,000 wing-strokes on the basis of four strokes for 

 each chirp ! I have no doubt many crickets chirp millions of times 

 in the season which constitutes their span of life. What is it all 

 about ? Sex alone does not explain it. No cricket needs to chirp 

 himself to death — chirp a cool four million or five million times 

 night and day in one bush, or perchance on one twig, to win the 

 momentary attentions and embraces of a silent, lonely female in the 

 vicinity. Here is the weird mystery of insect music, its eternal 

 persistence, an eternal wing play in some restless role of life, de- 

 signed, it would seem, to keep the insect content and happy while it 

 lives along to the very threshold of old age and death. 



SPECIALIZATIONS IN THE VARIOUS MUSICAL GROUPS 



In the cases of the beetles and some of the ants the forces of life ap- 

 pear to have concentrated their energies more particularly upon modi- 

 fications of the file vein. Weirdly enough, some of the beetles have 

 been equipped with two file veins, or two mandolins, so to speak. 



