VOCAL S INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 19 



and placed it in the sun at an open window upon a sprig 

 of Genista, thinking to hear its waking expostulation ; but grati- 

 fied as would seem with the aroma of spring, it began to vibrate 

 its antennae, and at length, when it bethought it to open its wings, 

 it darted up high into the air and was gone. The bare reticulated 

 and pitted under surface of the knob of the antennge — the pre- 

 sumable nose, or position of the sense of smell — is better seen 

 in the " large tortoiseshell " than any of our Vanessas. The 

 next year (1881), on April ISth—an Easter Sunday — I chanced 

 to take an afternoon stroll up what was known as the " one-tree 

 hill," on account of its being surmounted by a wind-swept elm 

 that had spread out its branches, and until you came quite close 

 looked like an oak. Several "peacocks" and "small tortoise- 

 shells " {Vanessa urticce), as I climbed the declivity, were flying 

 along the hedgerow with their wing-markings bleached by the 

 winter to a sepulchral white, and when I had descended into the 

 dell beneath St. Matha's Hill, I saw a male of the " small 

 tortoiseshell" descend from the pale blue air and settle behind 

 a female, who was basking with expanded wings on a nettle- 

 clump, enjoying the rays of the setting sun. He then patted 

 her with his fore feet, nodded his head, and, fluttering his wings, 

 he made a faint stridulous sound, as I remarked, at the time. 

 But when provoked the "small tortoiseshell" becomes more 

 decidedly musical, for it leaves with regret its fairy dreams. A 

 fresh brood of this butterfly, on Aug. 22nd, 1876, hastened to 

 find shelter from an inclement blast in an outhouse in Argyle- 

 shire, and, detaching one of these from the rafters, and placing 

 it on the palm of my hand, I lightly touched the tails of its 

 hinder wings, when it immediately opened both wings at 

 once with a distinct soft and grating sound of sandpaper, and 

 I caused it to perform thus three or four times before I set 

 it free. 



The notes of love and rivalry vociferated at the barn-door 

 by the guinea-fowl and cockerel, and struck up on tree and briar 

 by Cicada and Orthoptera, are then rarely sounded out by the 

 Lepidoptera, whose males, like the heaux of days gone by, often 

 revel in velvets, satins, and silken sheen, or whose scales kindle 

 with a purple glow as those of the Morphos and Apaturas, 

 Various ideas have been held in regard to the reason of this 



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