The Ash Cicada is a ventriloquist. If we examine the abdomen by holding it up to the light, we see that the front two thirds are translucent. Let us snip off the opaque third part that retains, reduced to the strictly indispensable, the organs essential to the propagation of the species and the preservation of the individual. The rest of the belly is wide open and presents a spacious cavity, with nothing but its tegumentary walls, except in the case of the dorsal surface, which is lined with a thin layer of muscle and serves as a support to the slender digestive tube, which is little more than a thread. The large receptacle, forming nearly half of the insect’s total bulk, is therefore empty, or nearly so. At the back are seen the two motor pillars of the cymbals, the two muscular columns arranged in a V. To the right and left of the point of this V gleam the two tiny mirrors; and the empty space is continued between the two branches into the depths of the thorax. This hollow belly and its thoracic complement form an enormous resonator, unapproached by that of any other performer in our district. If I close with my finger the orifice in the abdomen which I have just clipped, the sound becomes lower, in conformity with the laws affecting organ-pipes; if I fit a cylinder, a screw of paper, to the mouth of the open belly, the sound becomes louder as well as deeper. With a paper funnel properly adjusted, its wide end thrust into the mouth of a test-tube acting as a sounding-board, we have no longer the shrilling of the Cicada but something very near the bellowing of a Bull. My small children, happening to be there at the moment when I am making my acoustic experiments, run away scared. The familiar insect inspires them with terror. The harshness of the sound appears to be due to the tongue of the rattle rasping the nervures of the vibrating cymbals; its intensity may no doubt be ascribed to the spacious sounding-board of the belly. Assuredly one must be passionately enamoured of song thus to empty one’s belly and chest in order to make room for a musical-box. The essential vital organs are reduced to the minimum, are confined to a tiny corner, so as to leave a greater space for the sounding-cavity. Song comes first; all the rest takes second place. It is a good thing that the Ash Cicada does not follow the teaching of the evolutionists. If, becoming more enthusiastic from generation to generation, he were able by progressive stages to acquire a ventral sounding-board fit to compare with that which my paper screws give him, my Provence, peopled as it is with Cacans, would one day become uninhabitable.