INSECT INSTRUMENTALISTS ALLAKD 569 



the scraper is upon the wing cover, and vice versa. The primitive 

 sawing of these lowly grasshoppers is never loud and impressive, 

 and seldom plays any noticeable part in one's experiences with the 

 poetry of insect music. 



THE SOUNDS OF THE KATYDIDS (TETTIGONIIDAE) 



As in the case of the grasshoppers, the characteristic sound of the 

 katydids is only a lisp or a rasp. Tonality, in the sense of musical 

 pitch as the human ear judges music, plays no part in their sounds. 

 For some mysterious reason this is a distinctive feature of the sounds 

 of all our katydids. From the southern giant katj^did, StilpnocMora 

 couloniana, to the tiniest woodland meadow katydid, G onocepltalus 

 neinoral'is, hint of tonality such as even the tiniest crickets possess 

 is absent. This is somehow a marvelous group behavior, provided 

 all our morphological classifications which make it seem thus have 

 been sound. We may think the katydids are far behind the crickets 

 because the latter alone have acquired tonality of an order closely 

 akin to the pitch of our own formalisms of music. It is possible to 

 go too far in our philosophizing, however, for if the katydids merely 

 rasp out strident noise, as our ears would judge it, they have at 

 least specialized in the direction of a better control or more varied 

 manipulation of the musical structures, resulting in a striking variety 

 of notes and deliveries wliich none of the crickets have yet evinced. 



TONALITY A DISTINCTIVE FEATURE OF CRICKET MUSIC 



Our morphological classification of the katydids and crickets has, 

 unintentionally, rigidly separated these two great families with re- 

 spect to certain unique features of their striclulations. As previously 

 stated, the crickets have somehow learned to chirp in terms of the 

 tonality of our own music. Their notes may be recognized as having 

 a definite musical pitch, whereas the katydids merely rasp out noise. 

 It is a marvelous step forward in the evolution of the musical im- 

 pulse as judged by human standards of audition and the enjoyment 

 of sound. The crickets appear to have gone no further, however, for 

 they merely trill out eternal monotones of sound in a continuous un- 

 ceasing shuffle of the wing, or they merely break it up into more or 

 less regular, rhythmic intervals, to produce their chirping soliloquies 

 and synchronal concerts. True musical pitch alone distinguishes 

 their music from that of the conehead, NeGConocephalus^ among the 

 katydids. Whereas the meadow katydids, Orchelhnmn^ some of the 

 amblycoryphas, and the angular-winged katydids, Microcentrum^ 

 have introduced new trends of composition and variety into their 

 songs, even as much as some of the less musical birds, the crickets, 

 strangely enough, have seemingly established their distinctive genius 

 on the basis of tonality alone. The same type of musical structure, 



