The Cicada: his Music 



scale, convex on the outside and crossed by 

 a bundle of five red-brown nervures. 



The first segment of the abdomen thrusts 

 forward a short, wide tongue, which is quite 

 rigid and of which the free end rests on the 

 cymbal. This tongue may be compared with 

 the blade of a rattle which, instead of fitting 

 into the teeth of a revolving wheel, touches 

 the nervures of the vibrating cymbal more or 

 less closely. The harsh, grating sound must, 

 I think, be partly due to this. It is hardly 

 possible to verify the fact when holding the 

 creature in our fingers: the startled Cacan 

 does anything at such times rather than emit 

 his normal song. 



The lids do not overlap ; on the contrary, 

 they are separated by a rather wide interval. 

 With the rigid tongues, those appendages of 

 the abdomen, they shelter one half of the 

 cymbals, the other half of which is quite 

 bare. The abdomen, when pressed with the 

 finger, does not open to any great extent 

 where it joins the thorax. For the rest, the 

 insect keeps still when it sings; it knows 

 nothing of the rapid quivering of the belly 

 that modulates the song of the Common 

 Cicada. The chapels are very small and al- 

 most negligible as sounding-boards. There 



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