USE OF INSECT SOUNDS. 225 



can make audible their anger and their fears. These we may 

 hear intermingled in the sharp, impatient scold of the first 

 humble-bee we may venture to imprison for a moment in the 

 hollow of our closed hand ; and we may listen to the fly's 

 expression of intense terror, in the peculiar screaming buzz 

 which she utters, when and only when in the grasp of her 

 arch enemy the spider. The same passion in different degrees 

 is expressed also by the unwonted creaking of various beetles 

 when caught or molested. 



It has been suggested that the hum of insects, while upon 

 the wing, may be useful as a means of informing them by 

 modulated sound of their proximity to or distance from ob- 

 structing objects. Most of the insect minstrels of whom we 

 have been speaking, being heard at early dawn, in mid-day 

 sunshine, or at dewy eve, may be considered as the singing- 

 day -birds of their race ; but opposed to these they have their 

 birds of night their bats and screech-owls in a company of 

 lugubrious performers, headed by the Death's-head and the 

 Death-watch. But of these in another place, and at a more 

 appropriate season ; for to ring the changes here upon their 

 boding melancholy strains would be to imitate the medley 

 arrangement of a fashionable music meeting, where alternate 

 impressions of the gay and grave the worldly and the solemn 

 are so contrived as to out-press each other, and thus leave 

 upon the mind scarce any impress whatsoever. 



