USE OF INSECT SOUNDS.

can make audible their anger and their fears.

225

These we may

hear intermingled in the sharp, impatient scold of the first humble bee we may venture to imprison for a moment in the hollow of our closed hand; and we may listen to the fly's expression of intense terror, in the peculiar screaming buzz which she utters, when-and only when-in the grasp of her arch enemy the spider. The same passion in different degrees is expressed also by the unwonted creaking of various beetles when caught or molested.

It has been suggested that the hum of insects, while upon the wing, may be useful as a means of informing them by modulated sound of their proximity to or distance from obstructing objects. Most of the insect minstrels of whom we have been speaking, being heard at early dawn, in mid-day sunshine, or at dewy eve, may be considered as the singing daybirds of their race; but opposed to these they have their birds of night-their bats and screech-owls-in a company of lugubrious performers, headed by the Death's-head and the Death-watch. But of these in another place, and at a more appropriate season; for to ring the changes here upon their boding melancholy strains would be to imitate the medley arrangement of a fashionable music meeting, where alternate impressions of the gay and grave-the worldly and the solemn ---are so contrived as to out-press each other, and thus leave upon the mind scarce any impress whatsoever.

226

THE INSECT CHOIR.

But it is chiefly in the aggregate-in the multitudinous combination of summer sounds, to which they so largely contribute that Insect Minstrelsy plays its most important and pleasing part

"Resounds the living surface of the ground:

Nor undelightful is the ceaseless hum

To him who muses through the woods at noon."

Besides those leaders of the band already noticed, choral multitudes made up of creatures covering earth and filling air, many too small, singly, for perception of eye or ear, aid largely to swell those pervading harmonies more felt than heard, which rise with the first breath of spring, and expire with the last sigh of autumn. This insect choir, descending in harmonious gradation (and scarcely completed by the motes of music which float upon the sunbeam) has been thus described by a celebrated French poet,* one of the very few of them endowed with a heart as well as an eye and ear for the delights which nature offers through our senses.

"Comme ils gravitent en cadence!

Nouant et dénouant leurs vols harmonieux.

*

L'œuil ébloui se perd dans leur foule innombrable,
Il en faudrait un monde à faire un grain de sable,
Le regard infini pourrait seul les compter.
Chaque parcelle encore s'y poudraie en parcelle.
Ah! c'est ici le pied de l'éclatante échelle,
Que de l'atome à Dieu l'Infini voit monter."

* De Lamartine.

Insects may be the last in the scale of animated beings capable of making music to their Maker's praise, and the strains of some of them may be the lowest in the scale of sounds perceptible to us. But if, with all true poets, we can hear sounds of worship in the murmuring sea and running waters, and in every tree played on by the breath of heaven-if we have an ear for these, and the like harmonies,—for "the harp of universal nature, which is touched by the rays of the sun, and whose song is the morning, the evening, and the seasons,"—if for these, the voices of things inanimate, we are gifted with a perceptive ear and receptive heart, can we refuse to reckon as music the softest vibration of the tiniest insect's wing, because it is an audible token of happy existence, and, as such, a hymn of gratitude to the Giver of the boon of life?

The classic Cicada, the grassy Gryllus
and the deep toned Dor.

That in their green-shops weave the smooth-haired silk."

"The flowery leaf

Wants not its soft inhabitants. Secure

Within its winding citadel, the stone
Holds multitudes."

HAVING "shewn up" already some of the most glaring enormities committed by moth caterpillars in the character of "Destructives," we shall now, in justice, advocate their claim to the title of Operatives. We might even consider them under the name of Conservatives, both general and particular;

-general, because even in their very ravages, wherein they feed themselves for the support of other creatures, they are made subservient to upholding the universal government of creation; and particular, because, in a very remarkable degree, their every proceeding has for its object the conservation of their kind; or, to speak more accurately, because all their doings, in obedience to this common law of nature, are so strikingly adapted to fulfil it.

This principle of conservatism is carried out by moth caterpillars in a multitude of ingenious works, wherein, according to their species, or rather according to their varied exigencies, they become artificers or operatives, capable of being distinguished by distinct denominations, correspondent with many of those which are applied to human occupations.

We believe it was Reaumer, who, with the lively fancy of his nation and character, first thought of arranging these caterpillars, as well as some of the solitary workers among wasps and bees, into the several crafts of "Stone-masons," "Carpenters," "Tent-makers," "Muff-makers," "Flaskmakers," and "Miners;" each of these mechanics exercising, in addition to his particular art, that of the weaver, common to them all; from the silk-worm-first manufacturer of royal robes-down to the tiny grub of the clothes'-moth, making, as we have seen, its own little body-coat, either from wool or from the produce of its cousin's labour.

With respect to the solidity, if not the ingenuity of his