VOCAL £ INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 303 



painter Turner saw the packet-boats arrive. I recall that the 

 only time I ever saw Thomas Hog, paterfamilias, a little spare 

 man, he rapped his snuff-box, and astounded me by saying he 

 had once taken an oar and rowed the packet-boat from Calshot 

 to Southampton. In those days when becalmed mid Channel on 

 a voyage to Boulogne, it was the fashion to fish for Mackerel. 

 Often on my return, after seeing the prismatic beauty of a misty 

 sunset, I heard, in gloom of the evening, a fitful moan of grass- 

 hoppers where the dark soil at the seaward foot of the glacis 

 afforded them concealment, and instinctively understanding this 

 to be their epithalamium, I returned in the glow of noonday to 

 be present at their nuptials. As I drew near the scene of the 

 tourney, I heard a surging sound that resembled the drag of the 

 waves on some pebbly shore which when I approached arose like 

 the sound of a hasty shower, and melted on the ear like the 

 patter of aspens, the bubbling of water, and the remote warble 

 of nightingales. Then sitting down on the seaweed to under- 

 stand the ways of Liliput, I observed that it was the charms of 

 a corpulent female, so much in estimation in eastern lands, that 

 provoked the astounding chorus, for whenever she was espied by 

 a wandering male, he jerked his right leg forward with a sound 

 of " thirp-thirp ! " and then the grasshopper bands around, one 

 and all, vied in celebrating her praise, the favoured beauty the 

 while retaining a leg lowered to revel in the adulation. When 

 a rival appeared the male, who was executing a solo, flew in his 

 face like an angry dog. On finding himself again alone he gave 

 a gentle stroke with his legs, producing but little noise, and, 

 leaping on the female, he gave her a quiet bite. This caused 

 her to hop off, whereupon he followed, and endeavoured to 

 engage her attention with a tune, until his patience being 

 exhausted, he swayed a leg forwards from one to five times, 

 producing a goose-like cackle, at which critical moment one of 

 those black Rove Beetles, known as the "Devil's Coach Horse," 

 came on the scene with open jaws and cocked-up tail. That 

 autumn seems to have been favourable for the increase of grass- 

 hoppers, for when the stove was lit on Nov. 26th, and my lady 

 friends were working monograms and solving conundrums, I 

 took up the ' Univers ' newspaper, and read a notice from the 

 south of Spain, which told of an alarming invasion of the 



