As to the quality of the sound produced by the cicada—of its song, as we may call it—this varies greatly in the different species, for there are many cicadas. Speaking of that of the largest—the great _Pomponia imperatoria_ of Borneo—as big as a mouse, one may almost say, Mr. Annandale remarks, “The sound produced by this species is, at the beginning of the song, like the winding up of a large clock, and ends by being comparable to the notes of a penny whistle. Between these extremes it rises in a series of trills, each of which concludes with a kind of click. Each section of the song is faster, louder, and clearer than the one which preceded it, until, almost five minutes after the cicada’s settling, the noise suddenly comes to an end as the insect flies off to another tree, where it commences again.”[29] This great pompous imperial insect—to give it a free rendering of its Latin name—sits shrouded in the mysteries of the deeper jungle, while smaller and less majestic babblers haunt its skirtings and the village groves. “Another species, commonly heard at night in the jungle, has a clear, loud, clarion-like call, which can be heard for a great distance.”[29] Of the three New Zealand species of cicada—or those found in Canterbury—a large and small green, and a black one, the two first, Dr. Powell tells us, say “crrrk-crrrk-crrrk,” the second “r-r-r-r-r-r,” and the third “crrrk-rrrrr,” _ad infinitum_. “Many persons,” he adds, “are totally unable to hear the voice of the small green cicada, or any very acute sounds, and inasmuch as the entire range of the human ear is, according to Helmholtz, eleven octaves, it has been justly remarked that the air may be filled with shrill insect sounds, which may be perfectly audible to the insects themselves, but absolutely inaudible to our grosser senses.”[30]