In view of these performances of the Katydids one may perhaps question the statement, often made, that crickets are _the_ most musical of all insects. The Snowy Cricket, however, of the United States, and no doubt elsewhere in America, is a very striking performer, especially at night, when it emits sounds which Nathaniel Hawthorne has likened to “audible stillness,” and of which he says: “If moonlight could be heard it would sound like that.” Thoreau describes it as a “slumbrous breathing,” but according to the State Entomologist of the United States, this “slumbrous breathing,” or “audible stillness,” consists of “a shrill re-teat, re-teat, re-teat,” which Mr. Leland Howard,[26] indeed, thinks the best description, but is not quite my idea—nor probably Hawthorne’s—of how moonlight would sound. Harrington—who I suppose is another entomologist—does not interfere with any of these opinions, but describes something which he has seen, and can find nothing about in books. “While the male,” he says, “is energetically shuffling together his wings, raised almost vertically, the female may be seen standing just behind him, and with her head applied to the base of the wings, evidently eager to get the full benefit of every note produced.”[26] No doubt the female likes the notes—that, indeed, is the _rationale_ of their utterance—but what they are really like it is impossible to make out from these various descriptions, another of which, by the way, is “a rhythmic beat.” Possibly they are no more extraordinary (at any rate, “re-teat” is not) than those of our own, and cheerful, house-cricket, which to my ear have always sounded very pretty, but which Cowper evidently did not care about except as a matter of association, since he thus alludes to them in the _Task_:— “Sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh, Yet heard in scenes where peace for ever (sic) reigns, And only there, please highly for their sake.” No doubt there are associations, though these, belonging to the kitchen, appear to me to be of another and blither description, but the “sounds” themselves, in my opinion, are neither harsh nor inharmonious, as far as any unpleasantness to the ear is conveyed by the last word.