THE GRASSHOPPER WARBLER 99 



Is, offers not sufficient attraction to the Nightingale ; yet I never 

 passed this way under such circumstances without feeling myself 

 compelled to stop once and again to listen to the monotonous whir 

 of what I had been told, and what I believed to be the note of the 

 large green grasshopper, or locust. Monotonous is, perhaps, not 

 the right word to use, for an acute ear can detect in the long un- 

 musical jar a cadence descending sometimes a semitone, and occa- 

 sionally almost a whole note ; and it seemed besides to increase in 

 loudness for a few seconds and then to subside a little below the 

 ordinary pitch ; this fall is chiefly at the breeding season. Whether 

 the difference was produced by a rising and lulling of the breeze, 

 or whether the musician actually altered its note and intensity of 

 noise (or must I call it music ?), I could never decide. As long as 

 I fancied the performer to be an insect, I was inclined to believe 

 that one of the first suppositions was correct ; for it seemed hardly 

 possible that the purely mechanical action of an insect's thighs 

 against its body could produce variety of sound — as well expect 

 varied intonations from a mill-wheel or saw-pit. Attentive 

 observation, and the knowledge that the noise in question proceeded 

 not from the exterior of an insect, but from the throat of a bird, 

 has led me to form another conclusion. I am not surprised at my 

 having fallen into the error ; for the song of this bird is but an 

 exaggeration of the grasshopper's note, and resembles the noise 

 produced by pulling out the line from the winch of a fishing-rod, 

 no less continuous is it, nor more melodious. Many years after- 

 wards, when the memory of these pleasant wanderings had faded 

 away, I happened one evening in May to be passing across a com- 

 mon in Hertfordshire, skirted by a hedge of brushwood, when the 

 old familiar sound fell on my ear like a forgotten nursery melody. 

 The trees not being in their full foliage, I was not without hope 

 that I might be able to get a sight of the performer, whom I now 

 knew to be a bird, and I crept quietly towards the spot whence 

 the noise proceeded. Had it been singing in a copse-wood instead 

 of a hedge, I should certainly have failed, for there is the same 

 peculiarity about its note that there is about that of the insect — ■ 

 you cannot make up your mind exactly whereabouts the instrument 

 which makes the noise is at work. The note, when near, is con- 

 tinuous, monotonous, and of equal loudness throughout ; it might 

 be a minute spinning-wheel revolving rapidly, or a straw pipe with 

 a pea in it blown with a single breath and then suddenly stopping. 

 But whether the performance is going on exactly before you, a 

 little to the right, or a little to the left, it is hard to decide. I 

 approached to within a few yards of the hedge, and peered through 

 the hazel rods, now decorated with drooping tufts of plaited leaves, 

 but all in vain. I went a step or two nearer ; the sound ceased, 

 and the movement of a twig directed my attention towards a parti- 

 cular bush, on which I saw a little bird, about as big as a Hedge 



