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the olive groves sounding all summer long," have 

 celebrated the locust, 



" Soother of loves, encourager of sleep, 

 Oh locust! mystic muse, shrill wing'd" 



and the cicada, 



" Cicada ! thou, who tipsy with the dews 

 Of weeping skies, on the tall poplar tree 



Perch'd swayingly, thyself dost still amuse 



And the hush'd grove, with thy sweet minstrelsy" 



and even the murmur of bees " the small but 

 not sullen horn of one air-farer, and then of an- 

 other in succession, but not in pursuit, for each 

 in its instinct is as intent on its own far-off 

 flowers, as if there was not another bee under 

 the sun ;" and of a hundred other songsters of 

 the fir branches, the grass blade and the flower's 

 breast, each and all alive with the sound of 

 winged or shield-clad insects, hymning to the ear 

 of man the praises of their Creator. And that 

 this contemplation was not, even to the ancients, 

 the mere bodying forth of idle imaginings upon 

 the resources of nature, as exemplified in the 

 animal kingdom, but of philosophical observa- 

 tion, is unanswerably attested by the accuracy 

 of all their descriptions of the objects of natural 

 history. Thus we find in Melanger, the source 

 of many of these sounds distinctly alluded to,-^ 

 " excute facundas pedibus titubantibus alas ;" 

 which has been translated by the correct and; 

 classic Wilson, 



" Striking thine own speaking wings with thy feet:" 

 2 O 



