INSECT MUSICIANS SNODGEASS 409 



with a consequent medley of voices quite confusing to the uninformed 

 listener. Then, too, the daylight performers usually sing from be- 

 hind the scenes, while the stage at night is never illuminated, ex- 

 cept by natural moonlight. Finally, the actors are bashful, avoid 

 publicity, and most of them refuse to perform in limelight — interest- 

 ing data for the student of comparative psychology. But there 

 are no reserved seats in the theater, and the front rows are never 

 crowded, consequently any interested member of the audience, 

 by using sufficient caution, may get close enough to an individual 

 singer to throw on him a quick flash from a lantern and catch a 

 glimpse of him as he performs. Furthermore, with a little dexterity, 

 the artist may be caught uninjured in a jar and taken home. If 

 treated well, given leaves or whatever food he requires, and espe- 

 cially fresh drinking water every morning in the form of artificial 

 dew made by sprinkling water on the foliage in his cage, the captive 

 soon becomes accustomed to human surroundings and will often give 

 private rehearsals, even sometimes in the glare of electric lights. 



The rest of this paper is occupied mostly with the characteristics 

 and personalities of our best known American insect singers, those 

 of the eastern half of the Northern States. They all belong to four 

 families, three being families of the order Orthoptera, including the 

 grasshoppers, the katydids, and the crickets, and the other a family 

 of the order Hemiptera, or sucking insects, which comprises the 

 cicadas. The great majority of insects do not make any sounds at 

 all audible to our ears. A few besides those just mentioned, such as 

 some beetles, certain ants, and the queen bee produce squeaking or 

 rasping sounds of various sorts, but they are seldom noted by human 

 observers other than professional entomologists. 



The reader may find interesting accounts of the habits and songs 

 of American Orthoptera in the works of Allard, Blatchley, McNeill, 

 Parrott and Fulton, Piers, Kehn and Hebberd, Scudder, Somes, 

 Walker, and others. But the numerous papers by these writers are 

 scattered through many entomological publications, and the student 

 will obtain easiest reference to all of them and abstracts from most 

 of them, as well as almost all that is known of our eastern grass- 

 hoppers, katydids, crickets, and their relations in Blatchley's Or- 

 thoptera of Northeastern America. Scudder has given interpreta- 

 tions of the songs of the Orthoptera expressed in conventional musi- 

 cal notation, but the present writer knows nothing of the technique of 

 music and can present the insect notes only by the usual approximate 

 phonetic translations. 



The critical reader has probably already made note of some mix- 

 ing of metaphors. Therefore, before going further, it must be 



