INSECT MUSIC 147 



something exotic, or even fantastic, in a taste for insect 

 music. We wonder at the ancient Greeks and the 

 modern Japanese. But it should be borne in mind 

 that the sounds had and have for them an expression 

 they cannot have for us the expression which comes 

 of association. 



If the insects named as our best are rare and local, or 

 at all events not common, what shall we say of our 

 cicada ? Can we call him a singer at all ? or if he be not 

 silent, as some think, will he ever be more to us than a 

 figure and descriptive passage in a book a mere cicada 

 of the mind ? He is the most local, or has the most 

 limited range, of all, being seldom found out of the New 

 Forest district. He was discovered there about seventy 

 years ago, and Curtis, who gave him the proud name of 

 Cicada anglica, expressed the opinion that he had no 

 song. And many others have thought so too, because, 

 they have been unable to hear him. Others, from 

 Kirby and Spence to our time, have been of a contrary 

 opinion. So the matter stands. A. H. Swinton, in his 

 work on Insect Variety and Propagation, 1885, relates 

 that he tried in vain to hear Cicada anglica before 

 going to France and Italy, to make a study of the 

 cicada music ; and he writes : " In northern England 

 their woodland melody has not yet fallen on the ear of 

 the entomologist, but it must not therefore be inferred 

 that these musicians are wholly absent, for among the 

 rich and bounteous southern fauna of Hampshire and 

 Surrey we still retain one outlying waif of the cigales. 



