VOCAL & INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 427 



in the evening twilight, to the "tic-tac" of the needles of the 

 housewife engaged in knitting stockings, and whenever I rub a 

 hind leg of a desiccated specimen of the latter from a Jerusalem 

 garden over the striations at the front edge of the bladder where 

 the femur is wont to rest, I hear a noise like that made by the 

 old black indiarubber when wetted ; so, after being affrighted by 

 the clatter of the Pheasant on the wing in a country lane, I can 

 quite believe the assertion of De Villiers ; both moth and bird 

 seem sonorous. It is said the large "yellow tiger" (Pericallia 

 matronula), rarely met with in the woods of Europe, possesses 

 these balloons ; they are just visible in the "Jersey tiger" and 

 the " scarlet tiger " of our fenlands, but the common tiger 

 moth that has caused an uproar which has been evident through 

 a closed door is without them ; it has good claws, and I have 

 heard it scratch. They seem, indeed, to indicate a bygone 

 relationship of the Chelonidce, whose caterpillars feed on low 

 plants, to the lichen-bred Lithosidce, for the pretty flesh-coloured 

 Miltochrista miniata that frequents the forest ferns has them 

 faintly developed, and so has Gnopfa'ia rubricollis that flutters 

 among the foliage. Those of the orange black-speckled Setina, 

 met with in woods of Europe and Northern Asia, are far more 

 conspicuous, and shine like spectacle-glasses ; when Guenee 

 held Setina aurita in his fingers, he declares that he heard it 

 make a ticking like a watch, and a beating like a "death-watch" 

 beetle. They may be found in the woods above Montreux, 

 where they do not appear to be very common. 



Mr. Henry Edwards, who passed his youth on the London 

 stage, and later in life sat down to write a book on North 

 American butterflies, has recorded his experience of the sounds 

 made by Lepidoptera in the second volume of ' Insect Life.' 

 Among other recollections, he tells us, when resting one day 

 during the heat of the noonday sun under the shade of an 

 acacia in the Plenty Eanges, some twenty miles remote from the 

 bustle of the opulent town of Melbourne, how he was suddenly 

 aroused from his reveries by the " whiz-whiz ! " of two or 

 three Hecatesia fenestrata, lovely orange-and-black moths, which 

 were going in the fashion of the Swifts on the sidelong fling 

 adown a woodland vista. On his return to America he 

 heard the identical sound arise from a swarm of the Alypia 



