XXIX. 



MUSIC OF INSECTS. 



About midsummer, the majority of the singing birds 

 have become silent; but as one voice after another 

 drops away, new hosts of musicians of a diiTerent char- 

 acter take up the chorus, and their spinning melodies 

 are suggestive of the early and later harvest, as the 

 voices of the birds are associated with seed-time and 

 the season of flowers. In our climate the voices of no 

 species of insects are very loud ; but when their vast 

 multitudes are united in chorus, they may often be 

 heard above the din and clatter of a busy town. Na- 

 ture is exhaustless in the means by which she may 

 effect the same end; and birds, insects, and reptiles are 

 each provided with different but equally effective instru- 

 ments for producing sounds. While birds and quadru- 

 peds produce them by means of a pipe connecting with 

 their lungs, the frogs are provided with a sort of bag- 

 pipe, and the insects represent, in their respective 

 species, the harpist, the violinist, and the drummer. 



Thus there are several species that make sounds by 

 the vibration of a membrane attached to their sides or 

 to the shoulders of their wings. Such are most of the 

 crickets and grasshoppers. Others of the same tribes 



