When seeking honey a bee hums to A sharp.
Landoise noticed three different tones emitted by insects—a low one during flight, a higher one when the wings are held so that they cannot vibrate, and a higher one yet when the insect is held so that none of his limbs can be moved. This last is of course the voice proper of insects and is produced by the stigmata of the thorax.
No music is as familiar as that produced by the locusts, grasshoppers, and crickets, and, although they are not produced by the mouth, they answer as calls, and are undoubtedly a language to a certain extent, and indeed their calls have been reduced to written music.
The music of grasshoppers is produced in four different ways, according to Scudder. First, by rubbing the base of one wing upon the other, using for that purpose veins running through the middle portion of the wing; second, by a similar method, by using the veins of the inner part of the wing; by rubbing the inner surface of the hind legs against the outer surface of the wing covers; and, fourth, by rubbing together the upper surface of the front edge of the wings and the under surface of the wing covers. The insects which employ the fourth method also stridulate during night.
The first method is used by the crickets, the second by the green or long-legged grasshoppers, the third and fourth by certain kinds of short-horned or jumping grasshoppers. Butterflies have been heard to utter a loud click, and the same is true of many beetles; while the cicada, or seventeen-year locust, utters a most remarkable note or series of sounds.
Spiders have often been heard to utter sounds. John Burroughs says in his "Pepacton," that one sunny April day his attention was attracted by a soft, uncertain, purring sound made by little spiders that were running over the dry leaves.
LUCKLESS SPY WHO SWALLOWED A BULLET.
A MESSAGE STRANGELY CONCEALED.
Alertness of Governor Clinton's Men Defeated
the Stratagem of a British
Courier on His Way to Burgoyne.
One of the strangest incidents of the American Revolution is the story of a silver bullet.