At this time of year the many different kinds of insects popularly classified as crickets are in full song. Night and day they fill the air with their merry chirruping, although during the day-time the latter is more or less drowned by the chattering of birds, the shrill notes of cicadas and the many other noises that characterized a busy city such as the one in which we live. It is at night, when other insects, birds and men have gone to rest, that the crickets' choir is to be heard at its best. As I sit on my verandah after dinner listening to it, I am able to-distinguish a surprising number of different voices in the chorus of sound. Perhaps it would be better to call it an orchestra, for the means by which these insects make their noises are more in the nature of musical instruments tham of the voices of birds, animals and human beings. Yet this may, after all, be mere hair-splitting, since, in its final analysis, the human voice is as much a mechanical contrivance for producing sound as are the drawing of the bow across the strings in a violin or the rubbing against each. other of the wings of an insect. But, whatever' we like to call it, orchestra or choir, to those who are able to appreciate it, the effect of the combined playing of these insect musicians on a calm night in autumn is very pleasing. The notes produced by some of them are truly exquisite, as, for instance, those of the little cricket known to the Chinese by the euphemistic name of chin-chung or "golden bell," which literally sound like the tinkling of a tiny bell, or the clear sweet trilling notes of the field cricket. Others, perhaps less musical, are marked by a rhythm that a composer might well strive to catch or a human musician emulate. Many of the insects which-make these delightful noises are not true crickets, however, but belong to other branches of the great order. Orthoptera, or straight winged insects,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.