HORTICULTURAL JOURN-AL. 251 
midsummer, and tlien only during the middle of the warmest days. This 
note is a pleasant remembrancer of sultry summer noondays, of languishing 
heat and refreshing shade. It begins low and increases in loudness, until 
it is almost deafening, and then gradually dies away into silence. The 
most skilful musician could not perform a more delightful crescendo and 
diminuendo. It has a peculiar vibratory sound, that seems to me highly 
musical and delightful. The insect that produces this note is a grotesque 
looking creature, resembling about equally a grasshopper and a humble 
bee. 
The black crickets and their familiar chirping are well known to every 
body. It is an insect of this tribe that is celebrated in English romance as 
the " cricket on the hearth." The American species do not so habitually 
frequent our dwelling houses ; but they are all around our door steps, and 
by the wayside, under every dry fence and every sandy hill. They chirp 
night and day, and more or less in all kinds of weather. They commence 
their songs many weeks before the grasshoppers, and continue them to a 
later period in the autumn, not ceasing until the hard frosts have driven 
them into their retreats, and silenced them by a torpid sleep. 
The note of the katydid, which is a drumming sound, has less music in 
it than that of some of the other insects I have described. In our literatm'o 
no other species has become so widely celebrated, probably on account of 
the fancied resemblance of his notes to the word katydid. To my ear an 
assemblage of these little musicians, all engaged in uttering their peculiar 
note, seems more like the hammering of a thousand little smiths in some 
busy hamlet of insects. There is nothing melodious in these sounds, and 
they are accordingly less suggestive of poetical thoughts than those of the 
green nocturnal grasshopper, that is heard at the same hour and in similar 
situations. 
The nocturnal grasshoppers, sometimes called the August pipers, com- 
mence their chirping about the second week in August. These are the true 
nightingales of insects, and the tribe that seems to me most worthy of being 
consecrated to poetry. There is a singular plaintiveness in their low and 
monotonous notes, which is the charm of the late summer and early autumnal 
evenings ; and there are but few persons who are not affected by these 
sounds with a remarkable sensation of subdued but cheerful melancholy. 
This effect does not seem to be the result of association so much as that of 
some peculiar cadence or modulation of the sound. 
I believe it has not been generally noticed, that the notes of these insects 
are commonly in unison. These nocturnal pipers are the loudest singers of 
