376 THE ZOOLOGIST. 
THE VOCAL AND INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF 
i INSECTS. 
By A. H. Swinton. 
My earliest interest in the music of the Cicadas was awakened 
by the Greek Anthology, whose odes transport the reader to the 
Grecian colonies, and inspire a wish to hear their convivial 
melody; I have listened to Arab and Spanish workmen rattle off 
such ditties after sipping at the wine-bag, when the sun grew 
hot, regardless of epigram and prosody. Why the autochthons 
of the old territory of Locris made so merry while those of Reggio 
continued glum remained a mystery until I reverted to the 
hypothesis that the southern shore of the Italian toe received 
the sunlight early when the eastern crags of Reggio slept in 
gloom. ; 
One day I left the folios of the British Museum Reading Room 
and looked in on the late obliging Frederick Smith, in order 
to see the objects that so enchanted the Grecian musicians, one 
of whom, it is said, gained the prize for Hunomus when his 
harp-string snapped ; and certainly the designs of the dessicated 
vocalists were curiously interesting, but I felt the cold shudder 
of a frequenter of music-halls who beholds harps, violins, drums, 
and fifes piled up on a music-stand. What I learnt was that 
each Cicada carried two ribbed kettledrums slung away at either 
side, and beneath its body there were two corresponding mem- 
branes like battledores concealed by variously fashioned flaps. 
Summer came, with its rambles, and on the 2nd of June, 
1871, I found myself sitting at a deal table in a New Forest inn, 
where Mr. Capper, of Liverpool, and an invalid gentleman of the 
name of Owen, who had driven through the Forest with an intelli- 
gent lad, were setting a very complete assortment of local butter- 
flies and moths, and among their treasures I espied a specimen 
of the little Cicadetta montana, which they told me they had just 
beaten from a hawthorn-bush. Richard Weaver, in ‘ Loudon’s 
