St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1895-08-12

study the shadows In the. rudy half
light. You will then understand how
the cricket sang for dot" on Christ
mas eve, as related by Dickens in The
,Cricket On the HEARTH"
During the latter part of August or
the beginning of September let us
stroll through the garden just as the
darkness falls. There comes across
from the shubbery or the grove a note
with a cadence. Never mind that, for
it lis only a tree cricket, although it
would be all very well if we were
not listening for something better
IsWait and listen. There it is almost as
clear as if you yourself had said it
90 90 Katy-did-it Katy did" You may re-
.lg-upon it that if you could see the in
sect you would find it to be a large,
green, soft-bodied grasshopper, with
mHSt beautiful gauZe-like wings, and
Long translucent feelers.
THE DEATHS HEAD SQUEAK.
liant butterflies dancing over the flow
ers, so lightly, so silently, and have
watched the moths glide by like ghosts
on midsummer eve. Did you ever con-
meet them with sound? And yet some
of these can produce sounds. L was
once with a well-known entomologisr
in his library late at night. Intent on
examining case of beetles from Gen.
trail America, we did not notice a
deaths head moth which had flown
in at the open window, doubtless at
tracted by the light, until we heard {.
sound like the creaking of a door.
1t did not take long to see the i'm
mense moth and to close the window.
AS soon as the creature settled and we
marked its beauty and perfection of
Dlumage its fate was SaaIad u.
was doomed to become "a specimen
L covered 1t with the first handy thing
"a bell-glass, and it began to squeak,
as we both agreed, like one of ths,
rubber toys which infants delight in.
Henry Edwards has recorded in In
sect Life the publication of the
United States department of agricui-
ture, how he found in Australia a black
and orange moth humming like a bee.
Darwin tells how, in the orange
groves of Rio de Janeiro, he heard the
click of the butterfly twenty yards off.
| as male and female chased each
| other through the air. Another spe-
cies of lepidoptera found on ST. Cath
| crimes island on the coast of Brazil.
produces a sound which may be com
pared to rattle. And only within the
last few years two lovely species of the
! genus of Vanessa among butterflies
have been put on record as sound pro-
ducers.
Investigations into the way in which
the human voice, the lions roar. the
dogs bark, the birds song or the bull
frogs croak is produced must neces-
sarily be very abstruse Similarly anv
inquiry into the methods by which va
rious insects produce sounds must pre-
sent difficulty.
Putting aside the tapping of the
death watch and sounds of a kindred
nature, it would appear that we may
divide the insect performers In the
'Toy Symphony of the spring. sum-
mer and autumn fields into fiddlers
and drummers. Some produce their
music by rubbing the protecting veins
of the wing covers and the wings
themselves across each other, as the
violinist does the bow across the
string. This applies certainly to
crickets, grasshoppers, moths and but
terfiies. Others are provided with !
drums, as in the case of the katydid
The tabor5ts are formed by thin
and transparent membrane, stretched
in a strong, half-oval frame in the
overlapping norton of zach wing COW
err When. the male wishes to sound
his cell, he opens and shuts the wing
covers so that the frames of the tabor
cts rub rapidly and violently against
each other. The mechanism of the ia
borets and the concavity of the wing
covers reverberate and increase the
sound to such a degree that it may be
heard in the stiffness of the night at
the distance of a quarter of a mile
The music of the katydid is certainly
remarkable considering how it is pro-
duced 1t consists of two or three
distinct notes, almost exactly resemb- |
ling articulated sounds. These cores
pond to the rapidity with which the
wing covers are shifted across each
other and the note produced is very
well expressed in the popular name of
the insect. "-McCook.
CAUSED BY THE WINGS.
The "hum' and "buzz' produced by
so many insects comes from the vibra-
ton of the wings, and it will be read
lily seen that here we can get indica-
tons of the mental state of the per-
former from the pitch of the hum,
just as we can generally tell the state
of mind of a human being by the pitch
VI Tic NOlCt "a DuIllDlt DtG WHO Is
going for the schoolboy who has
struck it with his cap makes a very |
different sound to what it does when |
it is lazily visiting the flowers.
'Landois, calculating the rapidity of |
the vibrations by the sound produced |
thereby, states that the fly, which pro-
duces the sound of F, vibrates it's |
wings 352 times a second, and the bee, |
which makes the sound of A, 440 times |
a second. On the contrary, a tired |
bee huns on E, and therefore vibrates
its wings only $50 times a second. |
This difference is probably involun- |
tary, but che change of tone is evil
IDENTIFY under the command of the will. |
and thus offers another point of SINH
larity to the true voice A bee in !
pursuit of honey huns continuously |
and contentedly on A, but if it is ex- !
cited or angry it produces very diff |
ferent note Thus, then, the sounds |
OF insects do not merely serve to |
bring the sexes together; they are |
not merely love songs but also serve.
like any true language, to express the |
feelings" These words of Sir John |
Lubbock indicate line of study which |
could not fail to be full of interest.
space forbldS US to enlarge upon the |
difference often found in the respective
eHuo"HieHl VI Inaie ana female with
the power of producing sounds 1t is
true that it is the female MOSQUITO
which gives a musical overture before
using her dagger for such a dire pur-
pose, but then again it is the male
insect which is everlastingly telling
tales out of school by saying that
i'Katy- did-it, Katy-did;' and who so
base as a tale-beareri Whether the
balance is held fairly between the
sexes in this matters not
The sounds made by insects may not
technically be voices but we have
a right to call them SO, if it is lawful
to find tongues in trees, books in
running brooks, sermons in stones and
good in everything
rs
70 Through Car.