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Updated: May 20, 2025
Those cousins of Katy, the little green purring tree-crickets, fail in the same way and at the same time. When their chorus is fullest, the warm autumn night fairly throbs with the soft lulling undertone. I notice that the sound is in waves or has a kind of rhythmic beat. What a gentle, unobtrusive background it forms for the sharp, reedy notes of the katydids!
There was the shrill chirrup of cicadas and tree-crickets, the hoarse croaking of toads and frogs some of these as loud as the routing of a bull there was screaming of cats, the barking of jackals, and the chattering and howling of monkeys. A perfect chorus of discordant sounds produced by the barque moving down the river, and no doubt partially by my own passage through the underwood.
It is this unique and unmistakable character of the lark's song, and its fountain-like sparkle and copiousness, that are the main sources of its charm. How the nocturnal insects, the tree-crickets and katydids, fail as the heat fails!
"Yes," said Maya, with a faint chill of apprehension, "that's so; Cassandra told me about him; she heard of him from the sentinels. He comes when twilight falls and snouts in the grass looking for dead bodies. But do you associate with the hedgehog? Why, he's an awful brute." "I don't think so. We tree-crickets get along with him splendidly. We call him Uncle.
The tree-crickets had begun to utter their evening notes, and from far and near came forth from the forest the numberless sounds which often to the solitary traveller make the night hideous. "Oh, what can that be?" we heard Ellen exclaim from the other canoe. "See! see!" We looked astern, towards the plantation we had left.
Some came from on high, like falling stars, but most moved among the trees a few feet from the ground with a slow undulatory motion, the fire having a pale blue tinge, as one imagines an incandescent sapphire might have. The great tree-crickets kept up for a time the most ludicrous sound I ever heard one sitting in a tree and calling to another.
Like rats deserting a sinking ship, a whole Noah's ark of tree-living creatures was hastening along a single cable shorewards: tree-crickets; ants laden with eggs and larvæ; mantids gesticulating as they walked, like old men who mumble to themselves; wood-roaches, some green and leaf-like, others, facsimiles of trilobites but fleet of foot and with one goal.
For the boys and striplings, always a strong element in Florentine crowds, became at the height of Carnival-time as loud and unmanageable as tree-crickets, and it was their immemorial privilege to bar the way with poles to all passengers, until a tribute had been paid towards furnishing those lovers of strong sensations with suppers and bonfires: to conclude with the standing entertainment of stone-throwing, which was not entirely monotonous, since the consequent maiming was various, and it was not always a single person who was killed.
The sounds, too, that here saluted our ears had a soothing effect; the melancholy "coowhoo-a" of the swamp-owl the creaking chirp of the tree-crickets and cicadas the solemn "tong-tong" of the bell-frog the hoarse trumpet-note of the greater batrachian and high overhead the wild treble of the bull-bat, all mingled together in a concert, that, however disagreeable under other circumstances, now fell upon my ears like music, and even imparted a kind of sad pleasure to my soul.
Social life was virtually suspended between twelve and two, the 'calling hours' of the cold weather; and at sunset the tree-crickets shrilled louder than ever careless heralds of doom. Human tempers were shorter; and even the night did not now bring unfailing relief. Roy had been sleeping badly again; partly the heat, partly the clash of sensations within him.
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