The illusion of loud or soft, open or muffled sounds and consequently of distance, which forms the chief resource of the ventriloquist’s art, has another, easily discovered source. For the open sounds, the wing-cases are raised to their full height; for the muffled sounds, they are lowered more or less. In the latter position, their outer edges press to a varying extent upon the insect’s yielding sides, thus more or less decreasing the vibratory surface and reducing the volume of sound. A gentle touch with one’s finger stifles the sound of a ringing wine-glass and changes it into a veiled, indefinite note that seems to come from afar. The pale Cricket knows this acoustic secret. He misleads those who are hunting for him by pressing the edges of his vibrating flaps against his soft abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers, their sourdines; that of Œcanthus pellucens vies with and surpasses them in the simplicity of its method and the perfection of its results. The Field Cricket and his kinsmen also employ the sourdine by clasping their abdomen higher or lower with the edge of their wing-cases; but none of them obtains from this procedure such deceptive effects as those of the Italian Cricket. In addition to this illusion of distance, which, at the faintest sound of footsteps, is constantly taking us by surprise, we have the purity of the note, with its soft tremolo. I know no prettier or more limpid insect song, heard in the deep stillness of an August evening. How often, per amica silentia lunæ, [72] have I lain down on the ground, screened by the rosemary-bushes, to listen to the delicious concert of the harmas! [73] The nocturnal Cricket swarms in the enclosure. Every tuft of red-flowering rock-rose has its chorister; so has every clump of lavender. The bushy arbutus-shrubs, the turpentine-trees, all become orchestras. And, with its clear and charming voice, the whole of this little world is sending questions and responses from shrub to shrub, or rather, indifferent to the hymns of others, chanting its gladness for itself alone.