Would you on the other hand silence a live Cicada, that obstinate melomaniac who, when you hold him prisoner in your fingers, bewails his sad lot as garrulously as, just now, he sang his joys in the tree? It is no use to break open his chapels, to crack his mirrors: the shameful mutilation would not check him. But insert a pin through the side slit which we have called the window and touch the cymbal at the bottom of the sound-chamber. A tiny prick; and the perforated cymbal is silent. A similar operation on the other side renders the insect mute, though it remains as vigorous as before, showing no perceptible wound. Any one unacquainted with the method of procedure stands amazed at the result of my pin-prick, when the utter destruction of the mirrors and the other accessories of the church does not produce silence. A tiny and in no way serious stab has an effect which is not caused even by evisceration. The lids, those firmly fitted plates, are stationary. It is the abdomen itself which, by rising and falling, causes the church to open and shut. When the abdomen is lowered, the lids cover the chapels exactly, together with the windows of the sound-chambers. The sound is then weakened, muffled, stifled. When the abdomen rises, the chapels open, the windows are unobstructed and the sound acquires its full strength. The rapid oscillations of the belly, therefore, synchronizing with the contractions of the motor-muscles of the cymbals, determine the varying volume of the sound, which seems to come from hurried strokes of a bow. When the weather is calm and warm, about the middle of the day, the Cicada’s song is divided into strophes of a few seconds’ duration, separated by short pauses. The strophe begins abruptly. In a rapid crescendo, the abdomen oscillating faster and faster, it acquires its maximum volume; it keeps up the same degree of strength for a few seconds and then becomes gradually weaker and degenerates into a tremolo which decreases as the belly relapses into rest. With the last pulsations of the abdomen comes silence, which lasts for a longer or shorter time according to the condition of the atmosphere. Then suddenly we hear a new strophe, a monotonous repetition of the first; and so on indefinitely. It often happens, especially during the sultry evening hours, that the insect, drunk with sunshine, shortens and even entirely suppresses the pauses. The song is then continuous, but always with alternations of crescendo and decrescendo. The first strokes of the bow are given at about seven or eight o’clock in the morning; and the orchestra ceases only with the dying gleams of the twilight, at about eight o’clock in the evening. Altogether the concert lasts the whole round of the clock. But, if the sky be overcast, if the wind blow cold, the Cicada is dumb.