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Updated: May 23, 2025
The sun at morn on Hymettus, the sun at night on Daphni, the nightingales and cicadas in the olives by Cephissus, the hum of bees on the sweet thyme of the mountain, the purple of the hills, the blue and the fire of the bay, the merry tinkle of the goat bells upon the rocks, the laugh of little children in the streets—all these made Athens fair, but could not take the cloud from the hearts of the people.
Cicada, immortalized by Zenarchus the Rhodian as his "noiseless wife" "Happy the cicadas' lives, Since they all have noiseless wives." I have alluded to the egg of the cicada "inserted in the bark of a twig."
Twelve of them survived the journey, and as soon as I had arrived, I carefully placed the cicadas on the boughs of the trees in our garden in Green Street, Grosvenor Square. Conceive the surprise of these travelled insects at finding themselves on the soot-laden branches of a grimy London tree!
The cicadas join the chorus with their strident voices, their notes fairly tumbling over each other in their exuberance, and in their hurry to sing their solos. Tree toads tune up for the evening concert, a few short notes at first, like a violinist testing the strings, then, the pitch ascertained, the air fairly vibrates with their rhapsody.
One tree alone can live here, the pine, a wild creature, inhabitant of the forests and sterile coasts; there is a whole colony of them here; they crowd together fraternally, and cover the sand with their brown lamels; the monotonous breeze which sifts through them forever awakes their murmur; thus they chant in a plaintive fashion, but with a far softer and more harmonious voice than the other trees; this voice resembles the grating of the cicadas when in August they sing with all their heart among the stalks of the ripened wheat.
Darwin heard them while anchored half a mile off the South American coast, and a giant species of that country is said to produce a noise as loud as the whistle of a locomotive. Only the males sing, the females being dumb, thus giving rise to the well-known Grecian couplet: "Happy the cicadas' lives, For they all have voiceless wives."
"Goodness!" squealed Bobby, suddenly. "Bloodhounds? Don't you all feel just like Eliza crossing the ice, girls?" "Not much!" cried Dora, laughing. "On a hot day like this?" The cicadas were filing their saws in the tops of the trees and the promise of one of the hottest days of the season danced in the shimmer of haze over the water.
Meanwhile a handful of boys, who seemed to share my private feelings in regard to the performance, had entered the sacred precincts, their pockets stuffed with living cicadas.
The whirring of cicadas; the shrill stridulation of a vast number and variety of field crickets and grasshoppers, each species sounding its peculiar note; the plaintive hooting of tree frogs all blended together in one continuous ringing sound the audible expression of the teeming profusion of Nature.
We did not hear the howl of a monkey, nor the yell of a tiger-cat, common enough on the mountains which lay in front of us; but of harping, fiddling, humming, drumming, croaking, clacking, snoring, screaming, hooting, from cicadas, toads, birds, and what not, there was a concert at every step, which made the glens ring again, as the Brocken might ring on a Walpurgis-night.
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