June, 1915 Bulletin of the Brooklyn Entomological Society 57 



a songster should perish in the mouth of one devoted to song." 

 Another poet came to the rescue, then sang : " A spider, having 

 woven its thin web with sHm feet, caught a Tettix in the intricate 

 net. Seeing, I did not run by, for I heard its lament from its 

 fetters, and I freed it, saying : ' Go free, sweet singer.' " A little 

 girl in Sicily, long before the days of Roman greatness, lost her 

 pets. Anyte, the poetess, sang of it : " For a locust, the nightin- 

 gale of the ploughed fields, and for a Tettix, who sleeps in the 

 oak tree, did Myro make a common tomb, after the child had 

 dropped a maiden tear, for Hades, hard to be persviaded, had gone 

 away, taking her two playthings." A later writer commemorates 

 the same sad event : " For a Locust and a Tettix Myro placed this 

 monument, throwing on both a little dust with her hands, and 

 weeping at the funeral pyre ; for Hades carried oft" the male, and 

 Proserpine the other." Boys will be boys, and Tettix sings a 

 death song : " No longer shall I deHght myself by singing from 

 my quick moving wings ; for I have fallen into the savage hands 

 of a boy, who seized me cautionless, as I was sitting under the 

 green leaves." The worst fate of all is thus recorded by Aris- 

 totle himself in his Natural History, 330 B. C. : " The female 

 Tettix deposits her eggs in fields or in the reeds used to support 

 the grapevines, piercing the bark. The young are washed into 

 the earth and are common in rainy weather. The maggot under- 

 ground becomes a Tettigometra, and they are tastiest before they 

 emerge from the larval skin. The Tettigometra emerge by night, 

 burst their envelope and become Tettix. When first hatched 

 the males are sweetest to the taste but after sexual intercourse the 

 females are best for they are full of white ova." Oh, favorite 

 of the Gods, who serves to fill the Attic belly ! Galen, Father of 

 Medicine, prescribes a Tettix mixed with an equal amount of 

 pepper as a cure for colic. 



Solinus, the Roman, about 260 A. D., in his Polyhistor, notices 

 that the Cicadas of Rhegium have no song, and Granius, his 

 friend, tells him the reason. It seems that Hercules hved near 

 Rhegium and that the Cicadas disturbed his sleep. Had this God 

 of muscle been the Greek Herakles, they would have lulled him 

 to sweet dreams, but he was the Roman God and the insects 



