iFlotoers airti Uofces. 279 



In the fields Grylltadce innumerable are loud 

 with song. Listening to the melody of their 

 countless wings, strange it seems that their 

 transitory existence is but the enactment in an- 

 other world of the passions and jealousies of our 

 own ; that their allegro of stridulous sound is 

 but an expression of the fierce rivalry of males ; 

 that the grasshopper's voice proceeds from a 

 stamping-ground of strife, and the " crink-crink " 

 of crickets is largely the declaration of jealousy 

 and hate. 



From the raspberry-vines rises a dreamy, 

 summery voice, continuous during the day and 

 not unfrequent during the night, proceeding 

 from one of the small climbing crickets. Up go 

 the long antennae and gauzy wings, and a pro- 

 longed 



" Cree-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e--e-e-e-e-e " 

 trembles upon the air. This is CEcanthus fas- 

 ciatus, one of the pleasantest of insect-choris- 

 ters. How his delicate wings withstand the 

 constant scraping they do, and how they can 

 produce such a clear, bell-like sound, seems in- 

 conceivable. Like the green leaf-cricket, he is an 

 accomplished ventriloquist. One of these, hav- 

 ing escaped from confinement, and singing un- 

 ceasingly, led me a twenty minutes' search ere I 

 could locate his precise whereabouts from the 



