INSECT VARIETY. 169 



more numerous, and the song comparatively more powerful. The 

 wing'-covers of the males are adapted as sounding-boards to re- 

 ceive the music by their tough membranes netted rectangularly; 

 these in the females become extended, thinner', and the meshes 

 branch or stretch into V-'s, Y''s, and natural hexagons, with the 

 evident object of strengthening the attenuated structure, and thus 

 too, the V''s and Y^'s are observed invariably to point outwardly. 



In the existing rage for cheap music, when flashing lights, 

 impassioned notes, and sweet warblings greet the man of business 

 homeward wending, and drive far into the sorrows of the night, 

 it is scarcely to be wondered refrains so full of small peaceful 

 harmonies as those com^^laining notes, that each autumn echo 

 beneath the blithe ring of the mowers, should continue a study 

 for poet and musician. And it is thus we not only hear of them 

 blending in the luxuriant tide of song on Transatlantic pianos, 

 but what is more generally feasible, find them adapted to 

 rhythmic notations by admiring frequenters of the green banks 

 of the Rhine and Alpine glaciers, where they possibly lend much, 

 to the charms of the scenery. The sweetest minstrels of these 

 classic spots, according to Fischer, are Stenohotltrm miniatus, 

 heard all over Europe, and high up among the purple gentians 

 in the rarefied air of the Al[)ine snow-line, where his liquid 

 metallic trill has often drawn attention ; S. variahilis, that 

 has enchanted the trained ears of three German savans; and 

 Eietheophpna vanegatum, whose stilly song Yersin, in his 

 Vaudois valleys, fancied to vary with the hours of the clock. 



Nor are the pastorals of our insular troubadours to be 

 despised. How often do the young in years, who listlessly recline 

 in zepyhry hay-fields, take lovers^ walks or meditative strolls, 

 receive brisk overtures, which haunt the mind and whisper back 

 the cheerful voices of seasons that have flown! Nor in them- 

 selves do these songs of emulation want that charm of variety, 

 the invariable outcome of a busy life. The stridulation of 

 our most powerful violoncellist, the Stenobothrus viridulus of 

 Linnaeus, with plain brown wing-cases, slashed with shady 

 green above, as it arises in the parching heats of summer 

 from the patches of damp, rank grass in marsh-lands, has a 

 delightfully cool and refreshing sound, resembling the fitful 

 chafing of the silicious reeds, or vapoury sound of escaj)ing 



