76 Shadowings 



Nicias for the tettix would serve as the elegy of 

 many a semi : 



" No more shall I delight myself by sending out 

 a sound from my quick-moving wings, because 

 I have fallen into the savage band of a boy, who 

 seized me unexpectedly, as I was sitting under 

 the green leaves" 



Here I may remark that Japanese children 

 usually capture semi by means of a long slender 

 bamboo tipped with bird-lime (mochi). The 

 sound made by some kinds of se'mi when caught 

 is really pitiful, quite as pitiful as the twitter 

 of a terrified bird. One finds it difficult to per- 

 suade oneself that the noise is not a voice of an- 

 guish, in the human sense of the word " voice," 

 but the production of a specialized exterior mem- 

 brane. Recently, on hearing a captured se'mi 

 thus scream, I became convinced in quite a new 

 way that the stridulatory apparatus of certain 

 insects must not be thought of as a kind of 

 musical instrument, but as an organ of speech, 

 and that its utterances are as intimately associ- 

 ated with simple forms of emotion, as are the 

 notes of a bird, the extraordinary difference 

 being that the insect has its vocal chords outside. 



