234 LETTERS ON NATURAL MAGIC. 



bladder or bagpipes. These bags are placed 

 under, and rather behind, the wings in the axilla, 

 something in the manner of using the bagpipes 

 with the bags under the arms I could compare 

 them to nothing else ; and, indeed, I suspect the 

 first inventor of the instrument borrowed his 

 ideas from some insect of this kind. They play 

 a variety of notes and sounds, one of which 

 nearly imitates the scream of the tree toad." 



Among the acoustic wonders of the natural 

 world may be ranked the vocal powers of the 

 statue of Memnon, the son of Aurora, which 

 modern discoveries have withdrawn from among 

 the fables of ancient. Egypt. The history of this 

 remarkable statue is involved in much obscurity. 

 Although Strabo affirms that it was overturned 

 by an earthquake, yet as Egypt exhibits no 

 traces of such a convulsion, it has been generally 

 believed that the statue was mutilated by Cam- 

 byses. Ph. Casselius, in his dissertation on vocal 

 or speaking stones, quotes the remark of the 

 scholiast in Juvenal, " that, when mutilated by 

 Cambyses, the statue, which saluted both the sun 

 and the king, afterwards saluted only the sun." 

 Philostratus, in his life of Apollo, informs us, 

 that the statue looked to the east, and that it 

 spoke as soon as the rays of the rising sun fell 

 upon its mouth. Pausanias, who saw the statue 

 in its dismantled state, says, that it is a statue of 

 the sun, that the Egyptians call it Phamenophis, 

 and not Memnon, and that it emits sounds every 

 morning at sunrise, which can be compared only to 

 that of the breaking of the string of the lyre. Strabo 

 speaks only of a single sound which he heard ; 

 but Juvenal, who had probably heard it often 



