But more than cicada, or field-cricket, or any other insect musician in the land, is our great green grasshopper, or leaf-cricket, _Locusta viridissima_. I have been accustomed to hear him in July and August, in hedges, gardens, and potato patches at different points along the south coast and at some inland spots, always in the evening. It is easy, even after dark, to find him by following up the sound, when he may be seen moving excitedly about on the topmost sprays or leaves, pausing at intervals to stridulate, and occasionally taking short leaps from spray to spray. He belongs to a family widely distributed on the earth, and in La Plata I was familiar with two species which in form and colour--a uniform vivid green--were just like our _viridissima_, but differed in size, one being smaller and the other twice as large. The smaller species sang by day, all {138} day long, among water-plants growing in the water; the large species stridulated only by night, chiefly in the maize fields, and was almost as loud and harsh as the cicadas of the same region. I distinctly remember the sounds emitted by these two species, and by several other grasshoppers and leaf-crickets, but none of their sounds came very near in character to that of _viridissima_. This is a curious, and to my sense a very beautiful sound; and when a writer describes it as "harsh," which we not unfrequently find, I must conclude either that one of us hears wrongly, or not as the world hears, or that, owing to poverty, he is unable to give a fit expression. It is a sustained sound, a current of brightest, finest, bell-like strokes or beats, lasting from three or four to ten or fifteen seconds, to be renewed again and again after short intervals; but when the musician is greatly excited, the pauses last only for a moment--about half a second, and the strain may go on for ten minutes or longer before a break of any length. But the quality is the chief thing; and here we find individual differences, and that some have a lower, weaker note, in which may be detected a buzz, or sibilation, as in the field-grasshopper; but, as a rule, it is of a shrillness and musicalness which is without parallel. The squealings of bats, shrews, and young mice are excessively sharp, and are aptly described as "needles of sound," but they are not musical. The only bird I know which has a note comparable to the _viridissima_ is the lesser whitethroat--the excessively sharp, bright sound emitted both as an anger-note and {139} in that low and better song described in a former chapter. It is this musical sharpness which pleases in the insect, and makes it so unlike all other sounds in a world so full of sound. Its incisiveness produces a curious effect: sitting still and listening for some time at a spot where several insects are stridulating, certain nerves throb with the sound until it seems that it is in the brain, and is like that disagreeable condition called "ringing in the