152 SIXTH ANNUAL REPORT 



from inferior auditory endowment,* are deaf to much of the high-note 

 music in the air. 



Bnt my readers are mostly of a class who often leel, with Cowper, 

 that " God made the country and man made the town, '' and if, per- 

 chance, they must endure the city clash and clatter, they greatly miss 

 the accustomed insect-medley which is so invariable an accompani- 

 ment of the ripening year. They prefer, 



Katlier the varied warbler song, 



Or the loud shrill of insect wiii^if, 

 Thau sound of bustling city throng 



With throttle's shrieking, deafening din. 



And while breathing the oppressive air of a mid-summer noon, when 

 all life is hushed into a pall-like stillness by the sun's fierce, enerva- 

 ting rays ; or when Nature is shrouded and muffled in her mid-winter 

 cloak of snow and ice, and all is voiceless and desolate ; the ruralist 

 must often wish for the merry notes of the lively little fiddlers which 

 make up his autumn evening orchestra. Let us then scrape a more 

 intimate acqaintance with the leading members of the troupe. 



Since insects breathe through spiracles and not through their 

 mouths, their mouths are everlastingly dumb. Yet there is not one 

 •of their numerous species but has a language of its own — a language 

 frequently of signs and tokens, but often, too, of sounds ; and an inter- 

 esting chapter might be written on the various contrivances an(J dif- 

 ferent parts of the body employed by diff'erent species to make these 

 sounds, as well as upon the sounds themselves. But not to digress, I 

 shall come at once to our fiddlers. Blending with the ever-welcome 

 croaking of the frog — that surest harbinger of spring — the first insect 

 note we hear is the shrill chirrup of an occasional cricket ( Grylliis 

 niger). A few of these black little burrowers in the ground, manage 

 to live through the winter in the perfect winged state, which accounts 

 for their early playing, for none of the Crickets or Grasshoppers or 

 genuine Locusts can perform without their wings, as on these are 

 stretched the chords over which the bow is drawn. These insects are, 

 therefore, true fiddlers, and they plied their vocation ages before Ole 

 Bull was known to fame. Aye, long even before birds had been fash- 

 ioned to pour forth their vocal melody, there is good palseontological 

 evidence that grasshoppers, not greatly difi"erent from preeent forms, 

 fiddled away among the carboniferous ferns, and enlivened the dense 

 atmosphere of those preadamic times. 



* " Sounds become inaudible to many persons when they are fieri ved from vibrations more rapid 

 than 2*),non per second, and when the number reaches 3S, 00 J, the limit ofhumnn i>ercentibility is attained; 

 tlnis, tlie shrillness of a note may prove a hindrance to its study. This is illustrated by Tyndall in his 

 )-ecent book on sound. He writes : ' Cros^iu;;- the Wengern Alps wilh a friend, the grass on each side 

 -of the path swarmed with insects, Avhich, to 'me, rent the air with their sbrill chirruping. My friend 

 heard nothing of this, the insect world Ivinsr bevoiid his limit of audition. ' "'—Sciidder ; American Nat- 

 uralist, II, 113. 



