104 INSECT MISCELLANIES* 



ingly found that one of his friends was quite insen- 

 sible to the sound of a small organ-pipe, which was 

 far within the limits of his own hearing 1 . He also 

 remembers a female relation to have said that she 

 never could hear the crink of the hedge-cricket. 

 Two ladies of his acquaintance told him that their 

 father could never hear the chirping of the house- 

 sparrow, and this is the lowest limit to acute hearing 

 which he met with, and he supposes it to be very 

 uncommon ; deafness, even to the sound of the 

 house-cricket, is not usual, while it is by no means 

 rare to find people who are insensible to the shrill 

 squeak of the bat. 



The range of human hearing comprised between 

 the lowest notes of the organ, and the highest known 

 sound of insects, includes more than nine octaves, 

 the whole of which are distinctly perceptible by most 

 ears. But " since there is nothing/' Dr. Wollaston 

 concludes, "in the constitution of the atmosphere to 

 prevent vibrations much more frequent than any of 

 which we are conscious, we may imagine that animals 

 like the crickets (Grylli), whose powers appear to 

 commence nearly where ours terminate, may have 

 the faculty of hearing still sharper sounds, which at 

 present we do not know to exist ; and that there may 

 be other insects, hearing nothing in common with us, 

 but endowed with a power of exciting, and a sense 

 that perceives, vibrations indeed of the same nature 

 as those which constitute our ordinary sounds, but 

 so remote, that the animals who perceive them may 

 be said to possess another sense, agreeing with our 

 own solely in the medium by which it is excited, and 

 possibly wholly unaffected by the slower vibrations of 

 which we are sensible *." 



* Dr. Wollastort in Phil. Trans, for 1820, p. 314. 



