234 INSTRUMENT OF GNAT. 



our field and household bands the roving grasshopper trou- 

 badours, are all, like the feathered minstrels of grove and 

 garden, of the masculine sex; each doubtless playing his 

 mid-day sonata, or evening serenade, with intent mainly to 

 tickle the ear and fancy of his listening lady. 



On the muteness of the latter was founded a sly joke on 

 the Xantippes of antiquity, which is equally applicable both 

 to scolding and to musical matrons of the present day. 

 " Happy," says Zenachus the Rhodian, 



" Happy the cicadas' lives, 

 Since they all have noiseless wives ! " 



The so-called " Horn" or " Trumpet of the Gnat," would 

 seem no wind instrument at all ; its buzz, or hum, as well as 

 that of other two-winged flies, appearing, says Kirby, 1 to be 

 produced by friction of the base of the wings against the chest. 

 This conclusion would seem, however, scarcely to be recon- 

 ciled with the fact remarked by Rennie, 2 that they sometimes, 

 especially towards autumn, fly in silence, although, when 

 flying, the base of the wings must of necessity rub against 

 the chest. 



" The roving bee proclaims aloud 

 Her flight by vocal wings." 



So says the poet ; and, in support of the accuracy as well as 

 elegance of the dictum, he has the testimony of that careful 

 naturalist Swammerdam, who opines that her humming pro- 

 ceeds from the wings alone, especially the small membra- 

 naceous pair at the shoulders, when played upon by air 

 propelled from the subjacent air-tubes or spiracles, aided by 

 certain adjacent cavities which open wide apertures under the 

 wings. That the wings alone do not, however, produce the 

 bee's hum, seems sufficiently proved by an experiment of 

 Hunter's, wherein he found that after its wings were cut off 

 the poor insect could still utter (as well it might) a shrill 



1 Introduction to Entomology. * Insect Miscellanies. 



