176 



Marvels of Insect Life. 



Photo by] 



[H. Baxtin. 



Cricket's Musical Instrument. 



One of the wing-covers of the field-cricket, seen from below and 

 magnified to show the file-like ridge by which the sounds are pro- 

 duced. The arrow point? to this ridge. Below is seen the 

 " drum-head " by which the sound is intensified. 



Photo by] 



The Cricket's File. 



[H. Bastin. 



A portion of the ridge shown in the previous photograph is here 

 magnified to a far greater extent, showing the cross-furrows which 

 constitute the file. 



the one is as powerful as the other, but 

 that the note of the field-cricket has not 

 the displeasing raucous quality of the 

 cicada's. He goes further than this, for 

 he institutes a comparison between the 

 music of the field-cricket and that of the 

 crested lark. 



I am inclined to place the cricket 

 at the head of the choristers of spring. 

 In the waste lands of Provence, when the 

 thyme and the lavender are in flower, 

 the cricket mingles his note with that of 

 the crested lark, which ascends like a 

 lyrical firework, its throat swelling with 

 music, to its invisible station in the 

 clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias 

 upon the plain below. From the ground 

 the chorus of the crickets replies. It is 

 monotonous and artless, yet how well it 

 harmonizes, in its very simplicity, with 

 the rustic gaiety of a world renewed I 

 It is the hosanna of the aw^akening, the 

 alleluia of the germinating seed and the 

 sprouting blade. To which of the two 

 performers should the palm be given ? 

 I should award it to the cricket ; he 

 triumphs by force of numbers, and his 

 never-ceasing note. The lark hushes her 

 song, that the blue-grey fields of lavender, 

 swinging their aromatic censers before 

 the sun, ma}/ hear the cricket alone at his 

 humble, solemn celebration." 



At the beginning of June, the 

 female with the tip of her hind-body 

 bores a number of holes in the earth, and 

 in each hole she deposits a batch of straw- 

 coloured, cylindrical eggs. These various 

 batches amount in the aggregate to about 

 five hundred eggs. The holes containing 

 them are closed by the cricket before 

 she bores another ; and the eggs are left. 

 In something less than three weeks the 

 eggs hatch, the uj)per end pushing off 

 like the lid of a !)ox to permit the flea- 

 like, pale \()ung cricket to escape, and 



