158 UNDER THE OPEN SKY 



and is without meaning except as we find 

 it suggest emotion in ourselves. But the 

 voice of the cricket is a love-song. There 

 is doubtless a very limited stock of romance 

 in the little quadruple knot of nervous 

 matter which serves him for a brain. But 

 none the less, on his humble plane he 

 feels within him the universal desire for a 

 mate; and the outcome of that longing is 

 the chirp. 



IT EISES WITH THE TEMPERATURE 



But while his song is brightest and mer- 

 riest in the love time, which is the spring- 

 time, his cheery nature keeps bubbling over 

 well into fall, in sheer exuberance of spirits, 

 until cold weather dampens his ardor. His 

 joy, so a scientist tells us, rises and falls so 

 absolutely with the thermometer, that it is 

 possible to calculate the temperature with a 

 reasonable degree of precision by the pitch 

 of the cricket's shrilling. But, however 

 the male cricket may evince his joy, we are 

 entirely in the dark as to the degree of re- 

 sponse in his dusky mate. Her story is 



