In my neighbourhood I can capture five species of Cicadæ, namely, Cicada plebeia, Lin.; C. orni, Lin.; C. hematodes, Lin.; C. atra, Oliv.; and C. pygmæa, Oliv. The first two are extremely common; the three others are rarities, almost unknown to the country-folk. The Common Cicada is the biggest of the five, the most popular and the one whose musical apparatus is usually described. Under the male’s chest, immediately behind the hind-legs, are two large semicircular plates, overlapping each other slightly, the right plate being on the top of the left. These are the shutters, the lids, the dampers, in short the opercula of the organ of sound. Lift them up. You then see opening, on either side, a roomy cavity, known in Provence by the name of the chapel (li capello). The two together form the church (la glèiso). They are bounded in front by a soft, thin, creamy-yellow membrane; at the back by a dry pellicle, iridescent as a soap-bubble and called the mirror (mirau) in the Provençal tongue. The church, the mirrors and the lids are commonly regarded as the sound-producing organs. Of a singer short of breath it is said that he has cracked his mirrors (a li mirau creba). Picturesque language says the same thing of an uninspired poet. Acoustics give the lie to the popular belief. You can break the mirrors, remove the lids with a cut of the scissors, tear the yellow front membrane and these mutilations will not do away with the Cicada’s song: they simply modify it, weaken it slightly. The chapels are resonators. They do not produce sound, they increase it by the vibrations of their front and back membranes; they change it as their shutters are opened more or less wide. The real organ of sound is seated elsewhere and is not easy to find, for a novice. On the other side of each chapel, at the ridge joining the belly to the back, is a slit bounded by horny walls and masked by the lowered lid. Let us call it the window. This opening leads to a cavity or sound-chamber deeper than the adjacent chapel, but much less wide. Immediately behind the attachment of the rear wings is a slight, almost oval protuberance, which is distinguished by its dull-black colour from the silvery down of the surrounding skin. This protuberance is the outer wall of the sound-chamber. Let us make a large cut in it. We now lay bare the sound-producing apparatus, the cymbal. This is a little dry, white membrane, oval-shaped, convex on the outside, crossed from end to end of its longer diameter by a bundle of three or four brown nervures, which give it elasticity, and fixed all round in a stiff frame. Imagine this bulging scale to be pulled out of shape from within, flattening slightly and then quickly recovering its original convexity owing to the spring of its nervures. The drawing in and blowing out will produce a clicking sound.