His soft note is contrasted, intermittently, with a sort of Cat's mew, coming from another spot. This is the call of the Common Owl, the meditative bird of Minerva. After hiding all day in the seclusion of a hollow olive-tree, he started on his wanderings when the shades of evening began to fall. Swinging along with a sinuous flight, he came from somewhere in the neighbourhood to the pines in my enclosure, whence he mingles his harsh mewing, slightly softened by distance, with the general concert. The Green Grasshopper's clicking is too faint to be clearly perceived amidst these clamourers; all that reaches me is the least ripple, just noticeable when there is a moment's silence. He possesses as his apparatus of sound only a modest drum and scraper, whereas they, more highly privileged, have their bellows, the lungs, which send forth a column of vibrating air. There is no comparison possible. Let us return to the insects. One of these, though inferior in size and no less sparingly equipped, greatly surpasses the Grasshopper in nocturnal rhapsodies. I speak of the pale and slender Italian Cricket (Oecanthus pellucens, Scop.), who is so puny that you dare not take him up for fear of crushing him. He makes music everywhere among the rosemary-bushes, while the Glow-worms light up their blue lamps to complete the revels. The delicate instrumentalist consists chiefly of a pair of large wings, thin and gleaming as strips of mica. Thanks to these dry sails, he fiddles away with an intensity capable of drowning the Toads' fugue. His performance suggests, but with more brilliancy, more tremolo in the execution, the song of the Common Black Cricket. Indeed the mistake would certainly be made by any one who did not know that, by the time the very hot weather comes, the true Cricket, the chorister of spring, has disappeared. His pleasant violin has been succeeded by another more pleasant still and worthy of special study. We shall return to him at an opportune moment. These then, limiting ourselves to select specimens, are the principal participants in this musical evening: the Scops-owl, with his languorous solos; the Toad, that tinkler of sonatas; the Italian Cricket, who scrapes the first string of a violin; and the Green Grasshopper, who seems to beat a tiny steel triangle. We are celebrating to-day, with greater uproar than conviction, the new era, dating politically from the fall of the Bastille; they, with glorious indifference to human things, are celebrating the festival of the sun, singing the happiness of existence, sounding the loud hosanna of the July heats.