The Life of the Grasshopper 



I have no wish to shock anybody; but why 

 should I not give my opinion? Buffon's 

 style and the Nightingale's song both leave 

 me cold. The first has too much rhetoric 

 about it and not enough sincere emotion. 

 The second, a magnificent jewel-case of ill- 

 assorted pearls of sound, makes so slight an 

 appeal to the soul that a penny jug, filled 

 with water and furnished with a whistle, 

 will enable the lips of a child to reproduce 

 the celebrated songster's finest trills. A little 

 earthenware machine, warbling at the play- 

 er's will, rivals the Nightingale. 



Above the bird, that glorious production 

 of a vibrating air-column, creatures roar and 

 bray and grunt, until we come to man, who 

 alone speaks and really sings. Below the 

 bird, they croak or are silent. The bellows 

 of the lungs have two efflorescences se- 

 parated by enormous empty spaces filled with 

 formless sounds. Lower down still is the 

 insect, which is much earlier in date. This 

 first-born of the dwellers on the earth is also 

 the first singer. Deprived of the breath 

 which could set the vocal cords vibrating, 

 it invents the bow and friction, of which man 

 is later to make such wonderful use. 



Various Beetles produce a noise by sliding 

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