NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 153 



rivalry and emulation, as is the case with many animals 

 which exert some sprightly note during their breeding 

 time : it is raised by a brisk friction of one wing against 

 the other. 1 They are solitary beings, living singly male 

 and female, each as it may happen ; but there must be a 

 time when the sexes have some intercourse, and then the 

 wings may be useful perhaps during the hours of night. 

 When the males meet they will fight fiercely, as I found by 

 some which I put into the crevices of a dry stone wall, 

 where I should have been glad to have made them settle. 

 For though they seemed distressed by being taken out of 

 their knowledge, yet the first that got possession of the 

 chinks would seize on any other that were obtruded upon 

 them with a vast row of serrated fangs. With their strong 

 jaws, toothed like the shears of a lobster's claws, they per- 

 forate and round their curious regular cells, having no fore- 

 claws to dig, like the mole-cricket. When taken in hand I 

 could not but wonder that they never offered to defend 

 themselves, though armed with such formidable weapons. 

 Of such herbs as grow before the mouths of their burrows 

 they eat indiscriminately ; and on a little platform which 

 they make just by, they drop their dung ; and never, in the 

 day time, seem to stir more than two or three inches from 

 home. Sitting in the entrance of their caverns they chirp 

 all night as well as day from the middle of the month of 

 May to the middle of July ; and in hot weather, when they 

 are most vigorous, they make the hills echo ; and in the 

 stiller hours of darkness may be heard to a considerable 

 distance. In the beginning of the season their notes are 

 more faint and inward ; but become louder as the summer 

 advances, and so die away again by degrees. 



Sounds do not always give us pleasure according to 



1 Xenarchus, the Athenian comic poet of the Middle Comedy, flourished 

 about 330 B.C. ; in his play, yclept OTTVOJ, or " Sleep," he thus felicitates the male 

 cicadas, 



" elr' flfflv ol TCTTtyes oi>K evda.lfj.oves 

 &v rats yvt>ailv ovd' ortovv 0o^j evi : " 



" Happy the cicadas' lives 



Since they all have voiceless wives." [W. J.] 

 VOL. II. U 



