288 HUMMING SOUNDS 



forthwith he sets out to find him, hidden somewhere 

 in that thorny wilderness; and after much labour 

 having found him these two sing against one another, 

 and alternatively sing and listen, and listen and sing; 

 then rush together, whereupon each strives to tear the 

 sounding instrument from his opponent's back to silence 

 him for ever, or, if possible, to kill him outright. 



We see, then, that this insect is moved by an artistic 

 passion similar to man's, only more powerful, and as 

 sounds have a different value to him owing to the 

 difference in the senses, we can believe that his shrill 

 music gives him a greater delight than we receive 

 from our best performances. 



From the highest kinds of insect music let us now 

 go to the lowest — the humming sounds. These sounds 

 are ordinarily supposed to be produced solely by the 

 vibration of the wings in flight and are wholly in- 

 voluntary. I was feelingly persuaded that this was 

 not so, when, during my early life, I used to go out to 

 the bee-hives, and removing a side from a hive would 

 proceed to cut out honeycombs for the breakfast 

 table. I invariably knew just which one of a dozen 

 or twenty bees flying around would sting me from its 

 strident humming, so different from the soft, scarcely 

 audible hum of the others; and no sooner would I 

 know it than the bee would be on me burying his 

 sting in my cheek. I also observed that when a long- 

 legged house spider captured a fly and enveloped it 

 in a shroud-like webbing, the shrill outcry of the fly 

 was ten times louder than the sound he made when 



