THE VOICE OF MIRTh. 
^3 
ning. Very soon the fierce din of the Cicada will start 
from among the trees. Why do these creatures thus weary 
themselves with unprofitable noises ? This question is like 
some potent spell, for in an instant it seems to call up the 
new spirit, that way of interpreting the universe which was 
born but yesterday and already domineers over us all. Our 
fathers would have answered, “ They sing because they feel 
merry,” but we must not do so. That answer is no longer 
admissible. We must devise something to the effect that 
in the struggle for existence, prolonged through incon- 
ceivable ages, those birds and insects which produce sounds 
doubtless attracted the attention of the opposite sex more 
successfully, and so forth. 
But I am going to make myself a butt for scorn by 
maintaining that the former is the correct answer. As I 
sit at the door of my tent after dinner, the whole air is 
murmuring and tinkling with the voices of crickets and 
grasshoppers and little frogs. There is one melodious 
sound, a sweet repeated trill, which I have never been able 
to trace to its source. I have followed it up till I thought 
it was in a tree over my head, but it is more like the voice 
of a frog than a cricket. Perhaps it is a tree frog. There 
are also little frogs in the rice field, and black crickets 
