VOICELESS WIVES. 171 
haps, account for it: Eunomus and Ariston, two 
rival musicians, were contending against each 
other; each played the harp, and it was hard to 
say which was the better player, when ‘ crack’ 
went one of the strings of Eunomus’ harp. <A 
cicada at once pitched on the top of the instru- 
ment and supplied the want of the broken string, 
and so effectually that Eunomus was declared the 
victor. 
But the male Cicada has a shadow to cloud the 
bright sunshine of his happiness; a sad and sorry 
misfortune, I am afraid all my lady-readers will 
say, and I quite agree with them. The gentler 
sex, the Ladies Cicadz, are all, without an ex- 
ception, dumb. Some crabbed old Greek, evi- 
dently a bachelor or henpecked husband, has 
dared to say (I believe he was called Anaxagoras), 
Happy the cicadas’ lives 
Since they have all voiceless wives ! 
Well, if she does not waste all her day in singing 
and scolding, she attends to her duty as a mother; 
and, whilst her idle husband carols his simple 
ballad, she is busy depositing hundreds of eggs 
in the branch of a tree. 
Admirably adapted to its purpose is the oviposi- 
tor of the female cicada! A borer of the most 
