The Life of the Grasshopper 



a fold in the skin and are in full view, with- 

 out any sort of entrance-lobby or sound- 

 chamber. I may remark, in terminating our 

 survey, that the entrance-lobby exists only in 

 the Common Cicada ; all the others are with- 

 out it. 



The dampers are separated by a wide in- 

 terval and allow the chapels to open wide. 

 The mirrors are comparatively large. Their 

 shape suggests the outline of a kidney-bean. 

 The abdomen does not heave when the insect 

 sings; it remains stationary, like the Ash 

 Cicada's. Hence a lack of variety in the 

 melody of both. 



The Pigmy Cicada's song is a monotonous 

 rattle, pitched in a shrill key, but faint and 

 hardly perceptible a few steps away in the 

 calm of our enervating July afternoons. If 

 ever a fancy seized him to forsake his sun- 

 scorched bushes and to come and settle down 

 in force in my cool plane-trees and I wish 

 that he would, for I should much like to 

 study him more closely this pretty little 

 Cicada would not disturb my solitude as the 

 frenzied Cacan does. 



We have now ploughed our way through 

 the descriptive part; we know the instrument 

 of sound so far as its structure is concerned. 



74 



