350 CHAPTER XLIX. 



their god. Her melody has no monotony : for 

 touching, as it were, an organ stop, she makes her 

 music rise and swell and pulsate till the air is laden 

 with the sound. 



As a sign that they were natives of the soil, 

 the Athenian ladies wore in their hair a golden 

 ornament, which Virgil calls a Cicada : 



" Aurea solenni comptum quern fibula ritu 

 Cecropiae tereti nectebat dente Cicadse." 



But Virgil is clearly wrong, for the Cicada lives 

 in trees : it is the grasshopper which clings closely 

 to the soil, rising but a short distance on his scarlet 

 wings, and returning quickly to the sod. A golden 

 Locust was doubtless the ornament which nestled in 

 the locks of the Athenian women. 



The Cigale is confounded with the grasshopper 

 by persons who have not visited the sunny South, 

 nor heard the insect stridulate. I have a copy of 

 La Fontaine's Fables, with handsome full-page illus- 

 trations. The artist, no Provencal evidently, has 

 drawn the Cigale as a Locust or grasshopper. Now, 

 the Cigale, with its long transparent wings and wide- 

 set eyes, has no resemblance to a Locust. Probably 

 the poet knew a Cigale from a grasshopper, but 

 indeed a man who failed to recognise his own son 

 may easily have overlooked the distinction between 

 one insect and another. 



The Cicadse of Brazil are said to be audible at 

 the distance of a mile. If the voice of a man held 

 the same ratio to his size, he could be heard the whole 

 world over ! 



The song of the Cicada begins to be heard in the 

 last days of June, when the temperature approaches 



