Twenty years ago, all Paris went mad over a silly toy called the Cricket, or Cri-cri, if I remember rightly. It consisted of a short blade of steel, fastened at one end to a metallic base. Alternately pressed out of shape with the thumb and then released, the said blade, though possessing no other merit, gave out a very irritating click; and nothing more was needed to make it popular. The Cricket’s vogue is over. Oblivion has done justice to it so drastically that I doubt if I shall be understood when I recall the once famous apparatus. The membranous cymbal and steel Cricket are similar instruments. Both are made to rattle by pushing an elastic blade out of shape and restoring it to its original condition. The Cricket was bent out of shape with the thumb. How is the convexity of the cymbals modified? Let us go back to the church and break the yellow curtain that marks the boundary of each chapel in front. Two thick muscular columns come in sight, of a pale orange colour, joined together in the form of a V, with its point standing on the insect’s median line, on the lower surface. Each of these fleshy columns ends abruptly at the top, as though lopped off; and from the truncated stump rises a short, slender cord which is fastened to the side of the corresponding cymbal. There you have the whole mechanism, which is no less simple than that of the metal Cricket. The two muscular columns contract and relax, shorten and lengthen. By means of the terminal thread each tugs at its cymbal, pulling it down and forthwith letting it spring back of itself. Thus are the two sound-plates made to vibrate. Would you convince yourself of the efficacy of this mechanism? Would you make a dead but still fresh Cicada sing? Nothing could be simpler. Seize one of the muscular columns with the pincers and jerk it gently. The dead Cri-cri comes to life again; each jerk produces the clash of the cymbal. The sound is very feeble, I admit, deprived of the fulness which the living virtuoso obtains with the aid of his sound-chambers; nevertheless the fundamental element of the song is produced by this anatomical trick.