VOCAL & INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC OF INSECTS. 19 



of the Common Mole-Cricket of North America (Neocurtilla 

 borealis) commences its music as early as four o'clock in the 

 afternoon, but becomes more noisy at dusk ; its gruesome notes 

 "gru-gru!" resemble, it is said, the croak of a Toad at the 

 spawning season, mellowed by distance. The small Tridactylus 

 variegatus that digs in the sand of the rivers of Southern Europe 

 jumps well, but is mute. I have specimens of a similar insect 

 common in India. 



In the 1 Transactions ' of the Entomological Society of London 

 for 1902, pis. vii. & viii., may be seen figures of the Hydropedeticus 

 vitiensis, a Cricket with brushes on its hind legs, that was seen 

 skating and jumping on the surface of the Upper Navua, a clear 

 and rapid stream in the Fiji Islands ; the male of this aquatic 

 Cricket was not musical. The European Field-Cricket (Acheta 

 campestris) and its congeners raise the sound of " cree-cree ! " and 

 when the males meet they become more noisy. Should one en- 

 counter a female he taps her with his antennae, and plays staccato 

 notes expressive of delight, after which, according to Goureau, 

 he slowly makes off, his partner meekly following. There is a 

 steep, abrupt pasture-field, interspersed with furze, close to the 

 back of the village of Selborne, says Gilbert White, well known 

 by the name of Short Lithe, consisting of a rocky dry soil and 

 inclining to the afternoon sun, that abounds with the A. cam- 

 pestris. Here, sitting at the entrance of their caverns, they 

 chirp all night as well as all day from the middle of May to July, 

 and in the hot weather they make the hills echo. As they in- 

 variably run into their holes as you approach, although canni- 

 bals, their ways are best studied in confinement ; a cage full of 

 Crickets was the incentive to a quarrel in the history of ' Don 

 Quixote,' and Gilbert White found that the tunes of a male 

 suspended in the parlour imprisoned in a paper cage marvellously 

 delighted some hearers, filling their minds with a train of sum- 

 mer ideas of everything that is rural, verdurous, and joyous. 

 Now, when the Arcadian plain is much monopolized by wheat 

 and mangolds, it is still possible to picnic among the beeches on 

 Selborne Hanger, where the air of summer softly blows, and 

 meditate on the past. That Capt. Chawner captured the large 

 moth Ophiodes lunaris here is, I believe, pleasant fiction ; doubt- 

 less it is an alien. I have a small specimen of Deilephila 



