354 
POPULAK SCIENCE EE VIEW. 
has dedicated to this insect one of his most charming odes.* He 
there exalts its melodious voice, reverences it as the sweet har- 
binger of summer, calls it the “friend of the Muses,” and, 
finally, places it in the rank of the gods. 
The Latins were far from sharing in this Greek enthusiasm, 
for Virgil f accuses it of bursting the bushes with its harsh 
and deafening song : 
Et cantu querulse rumpent arbusta Cicadse. 
In the South of France its song is held in but slight esteem. 
As for the northern provinces, they do not even know it, for they 
mistake for its music the cry of the large green grasshopper. 
This error has been committed by the great French fabulist La 
Fontaine, who speaks of the Cigale as chanting all the summer , 
day and night . The artist, moreover, has drawn a grasshopper 
to illustrate the first fable of this celebrated humourist. 
Leaving now the domain of imagination and poetry for that 
of prosaic fact, we will direct our attention to the mechanism 
of the cry of the Cicada, be this regarded as musical or the 
reverse. Aristotle knew that the musical organ of this insect 
lay in the abdomen, and that it was, moreover, peculiar to the 
male sex.J The latter fact, too, was familiar to the poet Xenar- 
chus of Rhodes, for he sang, in not very gallant strain : 
Happy the Cicadas' lives, 
Since they all have voiceless wives. § 
But to the naturalist Reaumur must be conceded the honour 
of discovering the sound-producing organ, the drum — “ la tim- 
bale.” || Unfortunately, this illustrious observer was not able 
to dissect living Cicadse, and his attention — directed to a funda- 
note to the first-quoted passage, it is further stated that upon a vase of baked 
earth in the rich collection of the family Vivenzio, in Nola, there is the 
humorous representation of a poet placing in the flickering flame of an 
altar his lyre, from the strings of which some Cicadse are springing. 
“According to Plato the Muses transformed into Cicadse the men who 
amused themselves by singing, and were so absorbed in that occupation they 
forgot to eat and to drink.” He Gubernatis, “Zoological Mythology,”' 
vol. ii. p. 223. London, 1872. 
* Ode LXIII: “E Is Temya.” This has been beautifully rendered by Goethe. 
t Georg. III. 328. 
% u 0 1 rimyes. Havra Be ravra \ffo<fiei rq> vpevi r<5 vno to vi rofapa, ocrcov 
Birjprjrcu, oiov tcov reTriycov tl yivos rrj rpi^et rov Trvev paros." u He Anima- 
lium Historia,” Lib. IV. cap. 9, § 3. 
§ The original, which is from a fragment — YIIN02 — is as follows : — 
E?t’ elalv oi rernyes ovk. evBalpoves , 
qdv reus yvvaiQiv ovB 1 otlovv (fxovris evi. 
|J “ Memoires pour servir a l’histoire des Insectes,” Tome V., PI. XVIL 
1740. 
