486 NOISES OF INSECTS. 
them, as well as the Trichopterd and Neuroptera, which are equally barren 
of insects of sounding wing, and proceed to an order, the Hymenoptera, 
in which the insects that compose it are, many of them, of more fame for 
this property. 
The indefatigable hive-bee, as she flies from flower to flower, amuses the 
observer with her hum, which, though monotonous, pleases by exciting the 
idea of happy industry, that wiles the toils of labour with a song. When 
she alights upon a flower, and is engaged in collecting its sweets, her hum 
ceases; but it is resumed again the moment that she leaves it. The wasp 
and hornet also are strenuous hummers; and when they enter our apart- 
ments, their hum often brings terror with it. But the most sonorous flies 
of this order are the larger humble-bees, whose bombination, booming, or 
bombing, may be heard from a considerable distance, gradually increasing as 
the animal approaches you, and when, in its wheeling flight, it rudely passes 
close to your ear, almost stunning you by its sharp, shrill, and deafening 
sound. Many genera, however, of this order fly silently. 
But the noisiest wings belong to insects of the dipterous order, a majority 
of which probably give notice of their approach by the sound of their 
trumpets. Most of those, however, that have a slender body,—the gnat 
genus (Culex) excepted,—explore the air in’ silence. Of this description 
are the Tipularia, the Asilide, the genus Empis, and their affinities. The 
rest are more or less insects of a humming flight; and with respect to 
many of them, their hum is a sound of terror and dismay to those who hear 
it: To man, the trumpet of the gnat or mosquito, and to beasts, that of 
the gad-fly, of various kinds of horse-flies, and of the Ethiopian zimb, as I 
have before related at large, is the signal of intolerable annoyance, Homer, 
in his Batrachomyomachia, long celebrated the first of these as a trum- 
peter: — 
“Vor their sonorous trumpets far renown’d, 
Of battle the dire charge mosquitos sound.” 
Mr. Pope, in his translation, with his usual inaccuracy, thinking, no doubt, 
to improve upon his author, has turned the old bard’s gnats into hornets. 
In Guiana these animals are distinguished by a name still more tremendous, 
being called the devil’s trumpeters.1 Ihave observed that early in the 
spring, before their thirst for blood seizes them, gnats when flying emit 
no sound, At this moment (Feb. 18.) two females are flying about my 
windows in perfect silence. : 
After this short account of insects that give notice when they are upon 
the wing by the sounds that precede them, I must inquire by what means 
these sounds are produced. Ordinarily, except perhaps in the case of the 
gnat, they seem perfectly independent of the will of the animal; and in 
almost every instance, the sole instruments that cause the noise of flying 
insects are their wings, or some parts near to them, which, by their friction 
against the trunk, occasion a vibration—as the fingers upon the strings of 
a guitar—yielding a sound more or less acute in proportion to the rapidity 
of their flight, the action of the air perhaps upon these organs giving it 
some modifications. Whether, in the beetles that fly with noise, the elytra 
contribute more or less to produce it, seems not to haye been clearly ascer- 
tained: yet, since they fly with force as well as velocity, the action of theait 
4 Stedman’s Surinam, i. 24. 
