182 
LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, 
inside of the gum with salt and peach-leaves, the 
smell and taste of which are believed (with what 
foundation I know not) to be attractive to these 
insects* Not one of us was stung, except one of 
the negroes, and he before they began to cut into 
the hollow.'^ 
The silence of night, which has become pro- 
verbial in other countries, in this is but a poetical 
fiction,— at least in summer time* A large species 
of Gryllus, called provincially the Katedid [Pte- 
ropTiylla concava)^ fills the air with its nightly 
music, such as it is. Multitudes of them lodge in 
the trees around us, and no sooner has evening 
waned into night, than they tune up with their 
cracked notes, and keep up an incessant ringing 
during the whole night, until morning dawns, 
when they all become silent. This sound has 
been heard but a few weeks, beginning not gra- 
dually, but, as it were, in all places at once, or 
nearly so, and bursting forth into full and vigorous 
chorus. This is, I suppose, to be accounted for by 
a very interesting and remarkable fact, that the 
majority of individuals of any particular species 
of insects attain the perfect state almost simul- 
taneously, even to a degree of precision scarcely 
credible ; so that a brood seems suddenly to have 
started into existence, where not a single indi- 
vidual had been previously seen. The ringing 
crink of the Orthopterous insects is made only by 
* I Rave little doubt that the wild bees of Alabama are, as 
believed, colonies of the species domesticated there; but whether 
that species is identical with our A pis mellifica^ I am not sure, 
and I have now no means of ascertaining. I think it not im- 
probable, however, that the domestic bees of different countries 
may be found to consist of several species. 
