The same result, with the Pine-chafer, whose antennary leaves retain exactly the same position as when all was silent; the same result with the Cricket, whose tiny, out-stretched, thread-like antennæ should vibrate easily under the impact of the sound-waves. My three subjects are absolutely indifferent to my methods of exciting emotion: not one of them gives a hint of feeling any impression whatever. Years ago, a mortar thundering under the plane-tree in which the orchestra of the Cicadæ [62] was performing did not for a moment interrupt or otherwise affect their concert: at a later date, the hullabaloo of a holiday crowd and the crackling of fireworks let off close by failed to disturb the geometry of a Garden Spider working at her web, [63] to-day, the limpid tinkle of Les Cloches de Corneville leaves the insect profoundly indifferent, in so far as we are able to judge. Are we to infer deafness? That would be going a great deal too far. These experiments merely justify our opinion that the insect’s acoustics are not ours, even as the optics of its faceted eyes are not to be compared with those of our own. A mechanical toy, the microphone, hears—if I be permitted to say so—that which to us is silence; it would not hear a mighty uproar; it would be thrown out of gear and work imperfectly if subjected to the din of thunder. What of the insect, another, even more delicate toy! It knows nothing of our sounds, whether musical notes or noises. It has those of its own little world, apart from which other sound-waves possess no value. In the first fortnight of July, the male Pine-chafers observed in the vivarium withdraw to one side, sometimes bury themselves and die quite peacefully, killed by age. The mothers, on the other hand, busy themselves with laying their eggs, or, more accurately, with sowing them. They poke the soil with the tip of their abdomen, shaped like a blunt ploughshare, sinking into it sometimes altogether, sometimes to their shoulders. The eggs, to the number of a score, are laid separately, one by one, in little round cavities the size of a pea. They receive no further attention. They are positively dibbled into the ground. This method recalls the arachis, the African [64] Leguminosa, which curls its floral peduncles and thrusts its oleaginous seeds with their nutty flavour, underground to germinate. It reminds us too of a plant of my own country-side, the subterranean or double-fruited vetch (Vicia amphicarpos, Dorth.), which produces two sorts of pods, the first above ground, containing numerous seeds, the second under the surface, containing large seeds, usually no more than two in number. For that matter the two kinds are equal in value and give a similar yield.