VOCAL & INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 23 



the tree-top, and the woods resound with " katy-did-she-did ! " 

 the live-long night ; the shrill, it is said, may be heard a quarter 

 of a mile off. 



Usually it is only the male Leaf- Cricket that is musical. It 

 seems like the days of romance when the slow-sailing felucca, 

 with noiseless wing, wafted Lord Byron from the distractions of 

 the Villa Deodati, once honoured with a visit of Milton the poet, 

 to enjoy the chiaroscuro of the evening and calm stillness of 

 Lake Leman, broken by the light drip of the suspended oar and 

 the good-night carol of the omnipresent Phasgonura virridissima 

 that La Fontaine mistook for a Cicada and Goureau calls a Grass- 

 hopper. Heard at noon from the hedgerow elm, the fitful " zic- 

 zic!" of the male of the Great Green Leaf-Cricket rings out in 

 response to the din of the carriages hurrying to the racecourse, 

 and recalls the monotonous street cry of " knives and scissors to 

 grind " ; and when the comfortless gloom gathers at eight o'clock 

 in the chilly autumnal evening, until the hour that precedes mid- 

 night, the shuddering shrill of the predaceous horde of which it 

 is a sentinel, resounds with deceptive echo from the suburban 

 plot of white and-purple-flowered potatoes, running into a giddy 

 whirl resembling machinery in motion. A male I had in con- 

 finement in the New Forest commenced its shrieking wail to the 

 tune of the " Last Kose of Summer," in wild snatches at the 

 accustomed hour, and as the daylight faded its strophies came 

 in gushes of half an hour's duration, and terminated in a laconic 

 chirp. Like the Kobin and certain classical birds, Crow and 

 Parra, it became uproarious in the oppressive weather, when the 

 air grows light, presaging a shower of rain. While staying at 

 Sangatte I had a male and female in confinement, and when I 

 visited them one morning the male had utterly vanished, and 

 the female, bloated and hideous, alone remained to explain the 

 result of a disparity of temperament. The Great Green Leaf- 

 Cricket is found all over Europe excepting Lapland, and I have 

 met with it in the swamp in the Island of Guernsey, called the 

 V Grand Mare," where Prof. Babbage found it on Pyrola rotundi- 

 folia, one of the last inhabitants of a submarine forest. Oak, 

 firs, furze, and hazel have almost vanished, and yet the Speckled 

 Wood Butterfly is plentiful, the Oak Eggar Moth zig-zags in the 

 sunlight, and Large Footman Moths appear there. 1 have never 



