86 INSECT MISCELLANIES. 



people are stated not to be able to hear each other 

 speak *. 



In the latter case recourse might be had to a re- 

 medy, recorded by Ledelius to have been effectual 

 in the case of crickets. A woman, who disliked their 

 music, and had in vain tried to banish or silence them, 

 at length succeeded by accident Having one day 

 invited several guests to her house to celebrate a wed- 

 ding, she procured a band of music, with drums and 

 trumpets, to entertain the company. This music 

 was so much greater than the crickets had been used 

 to or could imitate, that they instantly took to flight, 

 and were never afterwards heard in the house t- 



That the real cicadae are very noisy, however, there 

 can be no doubt, from the testimonies above quoted : 

 besides, Smeathman, who has given so interesting 

 a history of the white ants, says that a cicada may be 

 heard to the distance of half a mile, and that the 

 singing of one in a room will immediately silence a 

 whole company J ; and the Swedish naturalist, Thun- 

 berg, tells us that a Javanese species makes a noise 

 as shrill and piercing as if it proceeded from a trum- 

 pet . Yet there cannot be a doubt that these loud 

 songsters were the tettiges of the Greeks, and were 

 placed upon a harp as the emblem of music, because, 

 as Mouffet gives the legend, when two rival musicians 

 (Eumonius and Ariston) were competing upon the 

 harp, a tettix, flying to the former, and sitting upon 

 his harp, supplied the place of a broken string, and 

 so secured to him the victory |[. Madam Merian says 

 that the music of another species (Tettigonia tibicen) 

 is thought to resemble the sound of the harp so nearly, 

 that the Dutch actually call it the harper. 



* Stoll, Cigales, p. 26. 

 j- Goldsmith, Animated Nature, iv. 238. 



J Bingley, Anim. Biogr. iv. 64. 

 Travels, iv. 201, || Theat, Insect. 



