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ANNUAL REPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1923 



THE TREE CRICKETS 



The unceasing ringing that always rises on summer evenings as 

 soon as the shadows begin to darken, that shrill melody of sound that 

 seems to come from nothing but from everywhere out of doors, is 

 mostly the chorus of the tree crickets, the blend of notes from in- 

 numerable harpists playing unseen in the darkness. This sound must 

 be the most familiar of all insect sounds, but the musicians them- 

 selves are but little known to the general public. And when one 



Fig. 23. — The snowy tree cricket, Oecanthus niveus. Two upper figures males, the one 

 on right with wings raised vertically in attitude of singing ; below a female, with 

 narrow wings folded close to body 



of them happens to come to the window or into the house and plays 

 in solo the sound is so surprisingly loud that the player is not sus- 

 pected of being one of that band whose mingled notes are heard 

 outside softened by distance and muffled by screens of foliage. 



Out of doors the music of an individual cricket is so elusive that 

 even when you think you have located the exact bush or vine from 

 which it comes, the notes seem to shift and dodge — surely you think 

 the player must be under that leaf, but when you approach your ear 

 to it the sound as certainly comes from another over yonder, but 

 here you are equally convinced again that it comes from still another 

 place farther off. Finally, though, it strikes the ear with such in- 



