[788.] Stedman, Surinam, i. 279. Cf. Bancroft, Guiana, p. 229.
[789.] Anat. of Melanch., 1651, p. 268.
[790.] Life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, p. 134.
[791.] The Mirror, xxv. 160.
[792.] Harris’s Col. of Voy. and Trav., i. 790.
[793.] Egypt. and Chinese, ii. 106.
[794.] Simmond’s Curios. of Food, p. 312.
[795.] Gatherings of a Nat. in Austral., p. 288.
[796.] Hist. of Ins., p. 3.
[797.] Reaumur considers this cry to be produced by the friction of the palpi against the proboscis (Memoires, ii. 293). Huber, but without mentioning the particulars, says he has ascertained that Reaumur was quite mistaken (On Bees, p. 313, note). Schroeter ascribes the sound to the rubbing of the tongue against the head; and Rösel to the friction of the chest upon the abdomen. M. de Johet thinks it is produced by the air being suddenly propelled against these scales by the action of the wings. M. Lorry states that the sound arises from the air escaping rapidly through peculiar cavities communicating with the spiracles, and furnished with a fine tuft of hairs on the sides of the abdomen (Cuv. An. Kingd.—Ins., ii. 678). Mr. E. L. Layard seems to be of the same opinion (Tennent’s Nat. Hist. of Ceylon, p. 427). But M. Passerini, curator of the Museum of Nat. Hist. at Florence, has lately investigated the subject more minutely. He traced the origin of the sound to the interior of the head, in which he discovered a cavity at the passage where muscles are placed for impelling and expelling the air. M. Dumeril has since discovered a sort of membrane stretched over this cavity, like, as he says, to the head of a drum. M. Duponchel has also confirmed by experiment the opinions of Passerini and Dumeril, and confutes Lorry, whose notion was generally adopted, by stating that the noise is produced from the head when the body of the insect is removed (Annales des Sci. Nat., Mars., 1828).