HEARING IN INSECTS. 87 



Amidst all this variety of conflicting opinions, we 

 need the less wonder that the Grecian poets should 

 praise the music of the cicada, and imagine it to feed 

 on dew, and live in perpetual youth, — fictions, how- 

 ever, altogether poetical and visionary ; for, like the 

 rest of this order, it feeds on herbage and leaves, and 

 so far from being long-lived, it does not, we believe, 

 survive its arrival at maturity more than a week or two. 



The preceding are the most celebrated of our in- 

 sect musicians, but there are numerous others, which, 

 though less celebrated, are not unworthy of notice, and 

 frequently attract the notice of the most incurious : 



* Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum. 

 To him who muses through the woods at noon, 

 Or drowsy shepherd as he Ues reclined. ' 



Thomson. 



Yet none of these sounds appear to proceed from the 

 same organs as the voice in larger animals, from the 

 throat and mouth ; for the buz of flies, the hum of 

 bees, the drone of beetles, and the ominous click of 

 the death-watch, are all produced, as we have already 

 explained, (together with the sounds of the cricket and 

 the cicada,) by the wings or other organs beating or 

 fretting on some vibratory substance. It may prove 

 interesting to mention a few of the more curious facts 

 connected with this subject. 



In the case of bees, Swammerdam correctly re- 

 marks that none of their air-tubes open into the 

 mouth ; and even if they did, or should air be im- 

 pelled thither out of the stomach, the narrowness of 

 the tube is ill fitted to produce sound. Their hum- 

 ming, therefore, he thinks proceeds from the wings 

 alone, particularly the small membranous wings at 

 the shoulder, when played upon by air propelled 

 from the subjacent air-tubes or spiracles.* In another 



* Biblia NaturoB, i, 217. 



