The Life of the Grasshopper 



a fold in the skin and are in full view, with- 

 out any sort of entrance-lobby or sound- 

 chamber. I may remark, in terminating our 

 survey, that the entrance-lobby exists only in 

 the Common Cicada ; all the others are with- 

 out it. 



The dampers are separated by a wide in- 

 terval and allow the chapels to open wide. 

 The mirrors are comparatively large. Their 

 shape suggests the outline of a kidney-bean. 

 The abdomen does not heave when the insect 

 sings; it remains stationary, like the Ash 

 Cicada's. Hence a lack of variety in the 

 melody of both. 



The Pigmy Cicada's song is a monotonous 

 rattle, pitched in a shrill key, but faint and 

 hardly perceptible a few steps away in the 

 calm of our enervating July afternoons. If 

 ever a fancy seized him to forsake his sun- 

 scorched bushes and to come and settle down 

 in force in my cool plane-trees — and I wish 

 that he would, for I should much like to 

 study him more closely — this pretty little 

 Cicada would not disturb my solitude as the 

 frenzied Cacan does. 



We have now ploughed our way through 

 the descriptive part; we know the instrument 

 of sound so far as its structure is concerned. 



74 



