All who have lived in the more southern parts of the world, including the southern countries of Europe, must have made the acquaintance of the cicadas, for in these regions they are large insects, conspicuous by their appearance when once seen, and by their song long before they are noticed. There is something very uncouth—one might almost say grotesquely humorous—yet at the same time pleasing and lovable about the broad flat heads and great goggle eyes of these insects, in the which it is easy to imagine some quaint sort of expression that seems to mean or suggest something for which the language supplies no word. Their wings, both long and broad, which, when folded, project far beyond the extremity of the abdomen, concealing everything save the great head and the wide shield or boss of the thorax, help also in giving them a most salient and characteristic appearance, and make them look more aerial than they really are. Their legs, whilst they retain their ordinary resting attitude, are entirely hidden, and so too are the organs of the mouth, which combine to make a sharp-pointed beak. Thus their appearance is typical of air and sunshine, and anything so gross as mere feeding or terrestrial locomotion seems foreign to their nature. The ancients, who loved and admired the cicadas extremely, thinking them the most fortunate of creatures, supposed that they lived entirely on dew. “Oh Tettix, drunk with sipping dew, What musician equals you?” sings Anacreon, or someone who imitated him and wrote very gracefully, for Tettix was a common Greek name for the cicada. Really they live on the sap of the trees on which they sit, and there may even be two opinions about their music. To me it is pleasant enough—full of the joy of the sunshine, as it were, and its loudness and the continuous way in which it goes on excites one’s wonder. In regard to the way in which it is produced, Darwin says, at page 351 of his immortal work, _The Descent of Man_: “The sound, according to Laudois, who has recently studied the subject, is produced by the vibration of the lips of the spiracles, which are set in motion by a current of air emitted by the tracheæ. It is increased by a wonderfully complex resounding apparatus, consisting of two cavities covered with scales. Hence the sound may truly be called a voice. In the female the musical apparatus is present, but very much less developed than in the male, and is never used for producing sound.” As the Greeks, who must have had their observers, used to say— “Happy the cicadas’ lives, Since they all have voiceless wives.”