AND DISTRIBUTE INSECT VARIETY. 29 



sole minstrels that fed the Grecian ear. Their painted atriums 

 were enlivened with the sunny creaking of diurnal Leaf-crickets, 

 and thrilled at the evening" shrill of such as live darkling ; and 

 many a neat little capricci has been engraved on gems by a 

 generation of forgotten poets scattered over the Archipelago 

 and in Sicily, to the transient guests of their basket-work cages, 

 whom they invested with a sanctity akin to that held by the 

 robin in England and stork in Germany. 



" Why, ruthless shepherds, from my dewy sj^ray, 

 In my lone haunt, why tear me thus away ? 

 Me, the nymj^h's wayside minstrel, whose sweet note 

 (Ver sultry hill is heard, and shady grove to float ? 

 Lo ! where the blackbird, thrush, and greedy host 

 Of starlings fatten at the farmer's cost! 

 AVith just revenge those ravages pursue, 

 But grudge not my poor leaf, and sip of grassy dew." 



Wrangham. 



The poet Meleager, to attune his lyre, sought the golden 

 corn to capture the Locust sounding his sweet-speaking wings 

 with his feet ; and as breakfast promises him garlic evergreen, 

 and pearly dewdrops that will melt in his mouth. Love and 

 resignation were alike learnt in these rural harmonies. The 

 maiden sitting in sunshine, listening to the chauntof the Cicada? 

 on the fragrant boughs, commingling with the rattle of the 

 Grasshoppers, forgets her lover and her tears; and one poet 

 deems death itself unre])ulsive should the Cricket of the briar 

 raise over him a monument of imperishable strophes ; but in 

 this he is rebuked by a mundane brother, who desires not to 

 dispense with the usual ritual. The autumnal death of the 

 performers themselves, and their flight to the dewy chalices on 

 the meads of golden Proserpine, were alike fantastically bewept. 



Even now a lingering love for the music of nature per- 

 vades the South. The peasants of Andalusia hang the House- 

 cricket at the artificial summer of their Christmas fire, for the 

 sake of his pleasing but wearisome Cree-cree. The vernal 

 echoes of the Field-cricket have preference with the Turks, pro- 

 bably from their tendency to fill the mind with a train of 

 summery ideas of everything that is rural, vei'durous, and joyous, 

 and therefore a suitable accompaniment to the western narcotic. 



