Xviii INTRODUCTION. 



lines, which give the sense of soothing to the word 

 "balm":— 



" This rest miglat yet have balm'd thy broken senses." 



King Lear, iii., Sc. 6. 



" All stars drop 

 Balm-dews to bathe thy feet." 



The Talking Oah. 



Browning, in his poem of eighteen stanzas, called 

 'A Tale,' alludes to the before-mentioned contest 

 of Greek lyrists, but the incident as to the broken 

 string is humorously and somewhat profanely treated : — 



" All was lost, then ! No ! a cricket 



(What ' Cicada ' ? Pooh !) 

 — Some mad thing that left its thicket 



For mere love of music — flew 

 With its little heart on fire, 

 Lighted on the crippled lyre." 



In England there is a very general confusion between 

 the common Grasshopper and the Cicada. This con- 

 fusion is kept alive by even able writers. A contributor 

 to the ' National Keview ' of July, 1888, not ungrace- 

 fully describes an English country village, as seen on 

 a sultry summer's day. He writes : — " The bees have 

 ceased from their murmurings amongst the king-cups 

 and the clover. The wakeful Cicadas, as though in 

 sympathy with sleeping Nature, have desisted from 

 their querulous monotone," &c.* 



With reference to keeping these insects for pets or 

 toys, I may state that the boys of Foochow, in the 

 central parts of China, are adepts at catching large 

 Cicadse by means of a long slip of bamboo, cleft at 

 one end. The Cicada sit on the branches of the pine 

 trees, and they also affect the twigs of a tree, known, 

 amongst Europeans, as the Pride of India. The insects, 

 I am informed, submit to be tickled like trout, until 

 dexterously a leg is entangled in the bamboo slit, from 

 which the creatures are transferred to small wicker 



* Mr. J. D. Bouchier, 



