XXIX. 



MUSIC OF INSECTS. 



ABOUT midsummer, the majority of the singing birds 

 have become silent; but as one voice after another 

 drops away, new hosts of musicians of a different char 

 acter take up the chorus, and their spinning melodies 

 are suggestive of the early and later harvest, as the 

 voices of the birds are associated with seed-time and 

 the season of flowers. In our climate the voices of no 

 species of insects are very loud ; but when their vast 

 multitudes are united in chorus, they may often be 

 heard above the din and clatter of a busy town. Na 

 ture is exhaustless in the means by which she may 

 effect the same end ; and birds, insects, and reptiles are 

 each provided with different but equally effective instru 

 ments for producing sounds. While birds and quadru 

 peds produce them by means of a pipe connecting with 

 their lungs, the frogs are provided with a sort of bag 

 pipe, and the insects represent, in their respective 

 species, the harpist, the violinist, and the drummer. 



Thus there are several species that make sounds by 

 the vibration of a membrane attached to their sides or 

 to the shoulders of their wings. Such are most of the 

 crickets and grasshoppers. Others of the same tribes 



