VOCAL d INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 431 



mention that Mr. J. J. Fountain lately observed, in the ' Country- 

 side,' that, when crossing at nightfall a meadow near Birming- 

 ham, he was surprised by a clicking sound, and suddenly found 

 himself surrounded by the mustachioed males of Heliophobus 

 popularis, that flew low over the grass where a newly emerged 

 "feathered gothic " was holding its wings over its back and 

 sounding the timbrel for a gathering. On examination I can 

 only imagine the sound might have been made by the pucker at 

 the base of the fore wing, but that Orthosia flavago makes a 

 similar clicking, as stated, is astonishing. It was believed that 

 Indian ants, provoked with a straw, began to hiss, until a 

 question arose whether the sound was not made by their feet, as 

 the boots of soldiers resound when a sudden halt is shouted. 



The music of many insects is simply the din of a file with a 

 chitinous resonance, recalling the rasping of a blacksmith's 

 forge. I have never heard a spider emit any sound, but Mr. 

 Wood-Mason has told the Entomological Society how Mygale 

 stridulans, dislodged from a bamboo clump in Assam, on being 

 attacked by his cat, elevated its head and threw its chelicerae 

 into rapid motion, when certain chitinous, club-shaped rods, 

 arranged comb-like on the inner surface of the basal joints of 

 the palpi, grating on the outer surface of their penultimate joint, 

 made an alarming whistle, recalling the muttering of an old man 

 who has lost his teeth. Mr. Wood-Mason mentioned at the time 

 that he had also a musical scorpion preserved in a bottle of 

 spirit. The mouse-like squeak of the " death's-head moth " is 

 somewhat similar in causation. Along the south-eastern coast 

 of England, as on the lands of Brittany, Acherontia atropos, some 

 seasons, is not uncommon, and its large green caterpillar is then 

 commonly found when the potato plots are dug up. In 1865, 

 1868, 1878, and 1885, according to Mr. Bichard South, it was 

 unusually plentiful in the British Islands ; 1867, 1878, and 1883 

 were corresponding years of most and fewest sun-spots, when the 

 atmosphere was perturbed. According to my father's pocket- 

 books, 1867 was fine, but the autumn was stormy in Hampshire ; 

 1878 was a succession of thunderstorms —I do not remember 

 such a summer except the one of 1883. The summer of 1865 

 was also sultry but changeable. During 1885, as the year 

 previous, the cholera was prevalent in India and the South 



