Birds and All Nature, Vol. IV, No 5, November 1898

Description

NATURE’S ORCHESTRA.



Even the Bugs make music. They may not be much as vocalists but they take part in nature’s symphony with the brook, the Bird, and the deep diapason of the forest monarch swaying and humming to the gusts of the wayward wind. It is true that the great majority of our species of insects are silent, and those which do make sounds, have not true voices, breathing as they do through holes arranged along each side of their body, and not through their mouths, they naturally possess no such arrangement for making noises connected with breathing as we find in the human larynx.

The “buzzing Fly” and “droning Bee” are classed among nature’s musicians, as well as the Cicadas, Grasshoppers, Crickets, Locusts, Katydids, and Beetles. Only the males are the musicians in the insect families-with the exception of the Mosquito, the lady being the musical member of that family-and the different kinds of Grasshoppers are provided with an elaborate musical apparatus by means of which they call their mates.

Chief among the insect performers is the Cicada, often confused with the Locust, though he does not belong to that family at all, who possesses a pair of complicated kettle-drums, which he plays with his muscles instead of sticks.

Directly behind the base of each hind leg is a circular plate of about one-quarter of an inch in diameter. Beneath each of these is a cavity across which is stretched a partition of three membranes. At the top is a stiff, folded membrane, which acts as a drum-head. Upon this he plays with his muscles, the vibrations being so rapid that to the ears of some listeners the noise, or music he engenders, sounds more like that of a mandolin than a drum. He is a black fellow with dull green scroll work over his thick body, lives in trees, and is generally invisible when he plays the drum.
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