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Both the larynx and the ear are constructed with special reference to the nature and properties of sound waves. *The Sound-producing Mechanism of the Body* consists of the following parts: 1. Delicately arranged bodies that are easily set in vibration. An arrangement for supplying the necessary force for making these bodies vibrate.
But I have no reason to suppose that this is a sexual character, excepting that with non-social insects there seems to be no use for sound-producing organs, unless it be as a sexual call. Every one who has wandered in a tropical forest must have been astonished at the din made by the male Cicadae.
In two families of the Homoptera and in three of the Orthoptera, the males alone possess sound-producing organs in an efficient state. These are used incessantly during the breeding-season, not only for calling the females, but apparently for charming or exciting them in rivalry with other males.
Among insects, sounds are produced in many ways, and for various reasons. A species of ant which makes its nest on the under side of leaves produces a noise by striking the leaf with its head in a series of spasmodic taps, and another ant is also very interesting as regards its sound-producing habit.
And further, I was taught and convinced by these two super-excellent music teachers, who instructed my pupils, that purely instrumental music, such as that of the violin or of the pianoforte, is also in its essence based upon and derived from vocal music, though developed through the independent discovery of a few simple sound-producing instruments.
He quotes, also, Guenee, that Setina produces a sound like the ticking of a watch, apparently by the aid of "two large tympaniform vesicles, situated in the pectoral region"; and these "are much more developed in the male than in the female." Hence the sound-producing organs in the Lepidoptera appear to stand in some relation with the sexual functions.
If this machine were operated in such a manner as to play, in a single second of time, the entire overture of an opera which would normally occupy half an hour, we should hear only an unintelligible noise a second long. This would be due to no defect in the sound-producing mechanism, but to the limitations of the sound-receiving mechanism, our auditory apparatus.
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