AND DISTRIBUTE INSECT VARIETY. 23 



the tufted banks, as though it were the river god breathino- his 

 wreathed shell until morning should go forth. How little do 

 we know of this life intense, and what strange mythological 

 fiction has it evoked in bygone time ! 



I had long heard echoing from inaccessible woods and suburban 

 avenues a note which made me think of some large tropical 

 cricket, although the producer of the sound remained unknown 

 to me ; one day, however, reclining about noon in a valley near 

 a vineyard, I caught the same noise produced just over my head, 

 and on asking a man, taking a siesta hard by, he assured me 

 it was the Cicale. Finding a pathway winding up to the spot, I 

 mounted and examined the vine poles, where I caught in a stroke 

 of the net a large black Cicada, powdered on the body with a 

 substance resemblino- mildew. On returnino- home and referring- 

 to my notes, I read " Scutello apice bidentato, elytris anasto- 

 mosibus quatuor lineisque sexferrugineis ;" which, with help of a 

 more detailed description, clearly determined the insect to be the 

 Cicada Plebeja of Olivier, and Fraxini of Fabricius ; but whether 

 this or an African species is the kind named Flebeja by Linnseus 

 appears disputed. 



Though the choice recitative of this classic entity scarcely 

 commanded the deafening hum of the mill-wheel, to whose 

 clatter it loved to sit and sing, and much less the roar of the 

 cataract, when once within harbour of the light acacia sprays, 

 he proved no mean orator. The poets call him ahrofves fj-ifi-nfj-a ^vpas, 

 and by taking a few lines of Virgil, and reciting them with a 

 good broad Neapolitan sing, no bad idea of the rattle of his notes is 

 conveyed: A-sTiee! a-sliee! a-shee ! . . . w/ieef wAaj/ / The last 

 honeyed harp-like refrain, WAee ! whai/ ! breaking from the leafy 

 cover as the voice of a dryad ; as something indescribably strange 

 and heavenly. During the rehearsal the classic Cicada may be 

 obsei-ved crawling crab-like backwards and forwards over the 

 bough, ever beginning anew this summery tune ; and then, when 

 the notes have fairly died away, there arises from the llowery 

 meadows around a whisper as of a sleeper breathing heavily ; an 

 ominous sound I once traced to a heavy-gaited green frog con- 

 cealed in a grassy tuft."^ '' By Jove," says Plato, in the opening 

 lines of " Phsedrus,'^ " what a charming place for repose ! It might 

 * This Cicada is sketched in the act of sinsins:, on Plate III. 



