236 OLD PLYMOUTH TRAILS 



voices are so thin and shrill that they are above 

 the common register. Indeed they are apt to 

 pass the average person as unnoticed as the tick 

 of a clock in a room where one is accustomed to 

 its presence. I do not know how long they had 

 been at it, the black night chirping crickets which 

 now make up for frozen nights by singing all the 

 warm part of the day, the green day crickets 

 whose note is pitched far higher, and a dozen 

 other chirping, shrilling things that one never 

 sees and rarely hears, however numerous and in- 

 sistent their voices, unless something forces his 

 attention in that direction and bids him listen. I 

 think it was the zoon of a cicada which waked 

 my attention, and once I heard them they seemed 

 to fill the air with shrieking. If the drum of the 

 partridge is the lowest piched note of which the 

 pasture people are capable, surely the piping of 

 some of these tiny creatures is the highest. It 

 is very difficult to determine the spot w^hence 

 comes the pulsing of the partridge's wings. It 

 is born out of nowhere and reaches your ear from 

 no particular direction. The shrilling of the pas- 

 ture insects is everywhere and it is equally im- 

 possible to locate it. They are veritable spirit 

 voices, these, and fill the spaces among the red 



