THE CRICKET 133 



The three other Crickets of my neighbourhood all carry 

 the same musical instrument as the Field Cricket, with slight 

 variation of detail. Their song is much alike in all cases, 

 allowing for differences of size. The smallest of the family, 

 the Bordeaux Cricket, sometimes ventures into the dark 

 corners of my kitchen, but his song is so faint that it takes 

 a very attentive ear to hear it. 



The Field Cricket sings during the sunniest hours of the 

 spring : during the still summer nights we have the Italian 

 Cricket. He is a slender, feeble insect, quite pale, almost 

 white, as beseems his nocturnal habits. You are afraid of 

 crushing him, if you so much as take him in your fingers. 

 He lives high in air, on shrubs of every kind, or on the taller 

 grasses ; and he rarely descends to earth. His song, the 

 sweet music of the still, hot evenings from July to October, 

 begins at sunset and continues for the best part of the night. 



This song is known to everybody here in Provence, for the 

 smallest clump of bushes has its orchestra. The soft, slow 

 gri-i-i gri-i-i is made more expressive by a slight tremolo. If 

 nothing happens to disturb the insect the sound remains 

 unaltered ; but at the least noise the musician becomes a 

 ventriloquist. You hear him quite close, in front of you; 

 and then, all of a sudden, you hear him fifteen yards away. 

 You move towards the sound. It is not there : it comes 

 from the original place. No, it doesn't, after all. Is it over 

 there on the left, or does it come from behind ? One is abso- 

 lutely at a loss, quite unable to find the spot where the music 

 is chirping. 



This illusion of varying distance is produced in two ways. 

 The sounds become loud or soft, open or muffled, according 

 to the exact part of the lower wing-case that is pressed by 

 the bow. And they are also modified by the position of the 

 wing-cases. For the loud sounds these are raised to their 

 full height : for the muffled sounds they are lowered more or 

 less. The pale Cricket misleads those who hunt for him by 

 pressing the edges of his vibrating flaps against his soft body. 



