I borrowed the municipal artillery; that is, the iron boxes which are charged with gunpowder on the day of the patron saint. The artilleryman was delighted to load them for the benefit of the Cigales, and to fire them off for me before my house. There were two of these boxes stuffed full of powder as though for the most solemn rejoicing. Never was politician making his electoral progress favoured with a bigger charge. To prevent damage to my windows the sashes were all left open. The two engines of detonation were placed at the foot of the plane-trees before my door, no precautions being taken to mask them. The Cigales singing in the branches above could not see what was happening below. There were six of us, spectators and auditors. We waited for a moment of relative quiet. The number of singers was counted by each of us, as well as the volume and rhythm of the song. We stood ready, our ears attentive to the aerial orchestra. The box exploded with a clap of thunder. No disturbance ensued above. The number of performers was the same, the rhythm the same, the volume the same. The six witnesses were unanimous: the loud explosion had not modified the song of the Cigales in the least. The second box gave an identical result. What are we to conclude from this persistence of the orchestra, its lack of surprise or alarm at the firing of a charge? Shall we conclude that the Cigale is deaf? I am not going to venture so far as that; but if any one bolder than myself were to make the assertion I really do not know what reasons I could invoke to disprove it. I should at least be forced to admit that it is very hard of hearing, and that we may well apply to it the homely and familiar phrase: to shout like a deaf man. When the blue-winged cricket, basking on the pebbles of some country footpath, grows deliciously intoxicated with the heat of the sun and rubs its great posterior thighs against the roughened edge of its wing-covers; when the green tree-frog swells its throat in the foliage of the bushes, distending it to form a resonant cavity when the rain is imminent, is it calling to its absent mate? By no means. The efforts of the former produce a scarcely perceptible stridulation; the palpitating throat of the latter is as ineffectual; and the desired one does not come. Does the insect really require to emit these resounding effusions, these vociferous avowals, in order to declare its passion? Consult the immense majority whom the conjunction of the sexes leaves silent. In the violin of the grasshopper, the bagpipe of the tree-frog, and the cymbals of the _Cacan_ I see only their peculiar means of expressing the joy of living, the universal joy which every species of animal expresses after its kind.