Vol. XXl'i] ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS 35 



and solemn in their effect upon the mind. Single singers some- 

 times continue to stridulate by day, but the great synchronal 

 chorus begins at evening. Tf the night is warm and moon- 

 light, waves of solemn, rhythmical music soon swing backward 

 and forward between the hedges. It is worth while to hear 

 this grand, antiphonal serenade, for it induces a peculiar, in- 

 describable psychic state — an intermingling of sadness and re- 

 poseful meditation. It is a "slumbrous breathing" to the mind 

 of Thoreau. Hawthorne calls it an "audible stillness" which 

 "if moonlight could be heard, it would sound like that." Laf- 

 cadio Hearn in Japan may as well have heard these same sol- 

 emn cricket sounds when he wrote: "The pleasure-pain of 

 autumn's beauty, the weird sweetness of the voices of the 

 night, the magical quickening of remembrance by echoes of 

 forest and field." This tree cricket sings until the nights be- 

 come so cold that the intermittent c-r-e-a-k — c-r-e-a-k is very 

 slowly delivered. The notes of this cricket have been more 

 carefully described than the notes of most other species, by 

 Davis. McNeil, Fitch, Burroughs, Thoreau, Hawthorne and 

 others. 



Scudder's description of the song of Oecanthus niveus does 

 not well apply to the intermittent notes of this cricket. He 

 says : "The song of the male is an exceedingly shrill and rapid 

 continuous trill ; its 'dry rosined wings' must play upon each 

 other with wonderful rapidity, for at its slowest, and the rapid- 

 ity varies somewhat, there are at least sixteen beats a second ; 

 the trill is nearly uniform and lasts for from two or three sec- 

 onds to a minute or two."* The shrill pitch and the prolong- 

 ed trill make it very probable that Scudder had heard the trill 

 of 0. nigricornis or 0. quadripunctatus. McNeil aptly re- 

 marks that Scudder's description and musical notation of 

 niveus "seems to be the song of fasciatus." 



Oecanthus angustipennis Fitch, is considerably less com- 

 mon than the other species of Oecanthus at Oxford, Mass. It 

 prefers the abundant foliage of the sweet fern, and is very 

 *. "Some American Crickets," by S. H. Scudder, in Harper's Maga- 

 zine, Vol. XCIII, October 1806. 



