THE CRICKET: THE SONG; THE PAIRING

The Life of the Grasshopper by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE CRICKET: THE SONG; THE PAIRING

CHAPTER XVI. THE CRICKET: THE SONG; THE PAIRING

In steps anatomy and says to the Cricket, bluntly:

“Show us your musical-box.”

Like all things of real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that of the Grasshoppers: a bow with a hook to it and a vibrating membrane. The right wing-case overlaps the left and covers it almost completely, except where it folds back sharply and encases the insect’s side. It is the converse of what we see in the Green Grasshopper, the Decticus, the Ephippiger and their kinsmen. The Cricket is right-handed, the others left-handed.

The two wing-cases have exactly the same structure. To know one is to know the other. Let us describe the one on the right. It is almost flat on the back and slants suddenly at the side in a right-angled fold, encircling the abdomen with a pinion which [328]has delicate, parallel veins running in an oblique direction. The dorsal surface has stronger and more prominent nervures, of a deep-black colour, which, taken together, form a strange, complicated design, bearing some resemblance to the hieroglyphics of an Arabic manuscript.

By holding it up to the light, one can see that it is a very pale red, save for two large adjoining spaces, a larger, triangular one in front and a smaller, oval one at the back. Each is framed in a prominent nervure and scored with faint wrinkles. The first, moreover, is strengthened with four or five chevrons; the second with only one, which is bow-shaped. These two areas represent the Grasshoppers’ mirror; they constitute the sounding-areas. The skin is finer here than elsewhere and transparent, though of a somewhat smoky tint.

The front part, which is smooth and slightly red in hue, is bounded at the back by two curved, parallel veins, having between them a cavity containing a row of five or six little black wrinkles that look like the rungs of a tiny ladder. The left wing-case presents an exact duplicate of the right. The wrinkles constitute the friction-nervures [329]which intensify the vibration by increasing the number of the points that are touched by the bow.

On the lower surface, one of the two veins that surround the cavity with the rungs becomes a rib cut into the shape of a hook. This is the bow. I count in it about a hundred and fifty triangular teeth or prisms of exquisite geometrical perfection.

It is a fine instrument indeed, far superior to that of the Decticus. The hundred and fifty prisms of the bow, biting into the rungs of the opposite wing-case, set the four drums in motion at one and the same time, the lower pair by direct friction, the upper pair by the shaking of the friction-apparatus. What a rush of sound! The Decticus, endowed with a single paltry mirror, can be heard just a few steps away; the Cricket, possessing four vibratory areas, throws his ditty to a distance of some hundreds of yards.

He vies with the Cicada in shrillness, without having the latter’s disagreeable harshness. Better still: this favoured one knows how to modulate his song. The wing-cases, as we said, extend over either side in a wide fold. These are the dampers [330]which, lowered to a greater or lesser depth, alter the intensity of the sound and, according to the extent of their contact with the soft abdomen, allow the insect to sing mezza voce at one time and fortissimo at another.

The exact similarity of the two wing-cases is worthy of attention. I can see clearly the function of the upper bow and the four sounding-areas which it sets in motion; but what is the good of the lower one, the bow on the left wing? Not resting on anything, it has nothing to strike with its hook, which is as carefully toothed as the other. It is absolutely useless, unless the apparatus can invert the order of its two parts and place that above which was below. After such an inversion, the perfect symmetry of the instrument would cause the necessary mechanism to be reproduced in every respect and the insect would be able to stridulate with the hook which is at present unemployed. It would scrape away as usual with its lower fiddlestick, now become the upper; and the tune would remain the same.

Is this permutation within its power? Can the insect use both pot-hooks, changing from one to the other when it grows tired, [331]which would mean that it could keep up its music all the longer? Or are there at least some Crickets who are permanently left-handed? I expected to find this the case, because of the absolute symmetry of the wing-cases. Observation convinced me of the contrary. I have never come across a Cricket that failed to conform with the general rule. All those whom I have examined—and they are many—without a single exception carried the right wing-case above the left.

Let us try to interfere and to bring about by artifice what natural conditions refuse to show us. Using my forceps, very gently, of course, and without straining the wing-cases, I make these overlap the opposite way. This result is easily obtained with a little dexterity and patience. The thing is done. Everything is in order. There is no dislocation at the shoulders; the membranes are without a crease. Things could not be better-arranged under normal conditions.

Was the Cricket going to sing, with his inverted instrument? I was almost expecting it, appearances were so much in its favour; but I was soon undeceived. The insect submits for a few moments; then, finding [332]the inversion uncomfortable, it makes an effort and restores the instrument to its regular position. In vain I repeat the operation: the Cricket’s obstinacy triumphs over mine. The displaced wing-cases always resume their normal arrangement. There is nothing to be done in this direction.

Shall I be more successful if I make my attempt while the wing-cases are still immature? At the actual moment, they are stiff membranes, resisting any changes. The fold is already there; it is at the outset that the material should be manipulated. What shall we learn from organs that are quite new and still plastic, if we invert them as soon as they appear? The thing is worth trying.

For this purpose, I go to the larva and watch for the moment of its metamorphosis, a sort of second birth. The future wings and wing-cases form four tiny flaps which, by their shape and their scantiness, as well as by the way in which they stick out in different directions, remind me of the short jackets worn by the Auvergne cheese-makers. I am most assiduous in my attendance, lest I should miss the propitious moment, and at last have a chance to witness the moulting. [333]In the early part of May, at about eleven in the morning, a larva casts off its rustic garments before my eyes. The transformed Cricket is now a reddish brown, all but the wings and wing-cases, which are beautifully white.

Both wings and wing-cases, which only issued from their sheaths quite recently, are no more than short, crinkly stumps. The former remain in this rudimentary state, or nearly so. The latter gradually develop bit by bit and open out; their inner edges, with a movement too slow to be perceived, meet one another, on the same plane and at the same level. There is no sign to tell us which of the two wing-cases will overlap the other. The two edges are now touching. A few moments longer and the right will be above the left. This is the time to intervene.

With a straw I gently change the position, bringing the left edge over the right. The insect protests a little and disturbs my manœuvring. I insist, while taking every possible care not to endanger these tender organs, which look as though they were cut out of wet tissue-paper. And I am quite successful: the left wing-case pushes forward above the right, but only very little, barely [334]a twenty-fifth of an inch. We will leave it alone: things will now go of themselves.

They go as well as one could wish, in fact. Continuing to spread, the left wing-case ends by entirely covering the other. At three o’clock in the afternoon, the Cricket has changed from a reddish hue to black, but the wing-cases are still white. Two hours more and they also will possess the normal colouring.

It is over. The wing-cases have come to maturity under the artificial arrangement; they have opened out and moulded themselves according to my plans; they have taken breadth and consistency and have been born, so to speak, in an inverted position. As things now are, the Cricket is left-handed. Will he definitely remain so? It seems to me that he will; and my hopes rise higher on the morrow and the day after, for the wing-cases continue, without any trouble, in their unusual arrangement. I expect soon to see the artist wield that particular fiddlestick which the members of his family never employ. I redouble my watchfulness, so as to witness his first attempt at playing the violin.

On the third day, the novice makes a [335]start. A few brief grating sounds are heard, the noise of a machine out of gear shifting its parts back into their proper order. Then the song begins, with its accustomed tone and rhythm.

Veil your face, O foolish experimenter, overconfident in your mischievous straw! You thought that you had created a new type of instrumentalist; and you have obtained nothing at all. The Cricket has thwarted your schemes: he is scraping with his right fiddlestick and always will. With a painful effort, he has dislocated his shoulders, which were made to mature and harden the wrong way; and, in spite of a set that seemed definite, he has put back on top that which ought to be on top and underneath that which ought to be underneath. Your sorry science tried to make a left-handed player of him. He laughs at your devices and settles down to be right-handed for the rest of his life.

Franklin left an eloquent plea on behalf of the left hand, which, he considered, deserved as careful training as its fellow. What an immense advantage it would be thus to have two servants each as capable as the other! Yes, certainly; but, except for [336]a few rare instances, is this equality of strength and skill in the two hands possible?

The Cricket answers no: there is an original weakness in the left side, a want of balance, which habit and training can to a certain extent correct, but which they can never cause wholly to disappear. Though shaped by a training which takes it at its birth and moulds and solidifies it on the top of the other, the left wing-case none the less resumes the lower position when the insect tries to sing. As to the cause of this original inferiority, that is a problem which belongs to embryogenesis.

My failure confirms the fact that the left wing-case is unable to make use of its bow, even when supplemented by the aid of art. Then what is the object of that hook whose exquisite precision yields in no respect to that of the other? We might appeal to reasons of symmetry and talk about the repetition of an archetypal design, as I, for want of a better argument, did just now in the matter of the cast raiment which the young Cricket leaves on the threshold of his ovular sheath; but I prefer to confess that this would be but the semblance of an explanation, wrapped up in specious language. For the Decticus, [337]the Grasshopper and the other Locustidæ would come and show us their wing-cases, one with the bow only, the other with the mirror, and say:

“Why should the Cricket, our near kinsman, be symmetrical, whereas all of us Locustidæ, without exception, are asymmetrical?”

There is no valid answer to their objection. Let us confess our ignorance and humbly say:

“I do not know.”

It wants but a Midge’s wing to confound our proudest theories.

Enough of the instrument; let us listen to the music. The Cricket sings on the threshold of his house, in the cheerful sunshine, never indoors. The wing-cases, lifted in a double inclined plane and now only partly covering each other, utter their stridulant cri-cri in a soft tremolo. It is full, sonorous, nicely cadenced and lasts indefinitely. Thus are the leisures of solitude beguiled all through the spring. The anchorite at first sings for his own pleasure. Glad to be alive, he chants the praises of the sun that shines upon him, the grass that feeds him, the peaceful retreat that harbours him. The [338]first object of his bow is to hymn the blessings of life.

The hermit also sings for the benefit of his fair neighbours. The Cricket’s nuptials would, I warrant, present a curious scene, if it were possible to follow their details far from the commotions of captivity. To seek an opportunity would be labour lost, for the insect is very shy. I must await one. Shall I ever find it? I do not despair, in spite of the extraordinary difficulty. For the moment, let us be satisfied with what we can learn from probability and the vivarium.

The two sexes dwell apart. Both are extremely domestic in their habits. Whose business is it to make a move? Does the caller go in search of the called? Does the serenaded one come to the serenader? If, at pairing-time, sound were the sole guide where homes are far apart, it would be necessary for the silent partner to go to the noisy one’s trysting-place. But I imagine that, in order to save appearances—and this accords with what I learn from my prisoners—the Cricket has special faculties that guide him towards his mute lady-love.

When and how is the meeting effected? I suspect that things take place in the friendly [339]gloaming and upon the very threshold of the bride’s home, upon that sanded esplanade, that state courtyard, which lies just outside the entrance.

A nocturnal journey like this, at some twenty paces’ distance, is a serious undertaking for the Cricket. When he has accomplished his pilgrimage, how will he, the stay-at-home, with his imperfect knowledge of topography, find his own house again? To return to his Penates must be impossible. He roams, I fear, at random, with no place to lay his head. He has neither the time nor the heart to dig himself the new burrow which would be his salvation; and he dies a wretched death, forming a savoury mouthful for the Toad on his night rounds. His visit to the lady Cricket has cost him his home and his life. What does he care! He has done his duty as a Cricket.

This is how I picture events when I combine the probabilities of the open country with the realities of the vivarium. I have several couples in one cage. As a rule, my captives refrain from digging themselves a dwelling. The hour has passed for any long waiting or long wooing. They wander about the enclosed space, without troubling about [340]a fixed home, or else lie low under the shelter of a lettuce-leaf.

Peace reigns in the household until the quarrelsome instincts of pairing-time break out. Then affrays between suitors are frequent and lively, though not serious. The two rivals stand face to face, bite each other in the head, that solid, fang-proof helmet, roll each other over, pick themselves up and separate. The vanquished Cricket makes off as fast as he can; the victor insults him with a boastful ditty; then, moderating his tone, he veers and tacks around the object of his desires.

He makes himself look smart and, at the same time, submissive. Gripping one of his antennæ with a claw, he takes it in his mandibles to curl it and grease it with saliva. With his long spurred and red-striped hind-legs, he stamps the ground impatiently and kicks out at nothing. His emotion renders him dumb. His wing-cases, it is true, quiver rapidly, but they give forth no sound, or at most an agitated rustling.

A vain declaration! The female Cricket runs and hides herself in a curly bit of lettuce. She lifts the curtain a little, however, and looks out and wishes to be seen.

Et fugit ad salices; et se cupit ante videri,

said the delightful eclogue, two thousand years ago. Thrice-consecrated strategy of love, thou art everywhere the same!

The song is resumed, intersected by silences and murmuring quavers. Touched by so much passion, Galatea, I mean Dame Cricket, issues from her hiding-place. The other goes up to her, suddenly spins round, turns his back to her and flattens his abdomen against the ground. Crawling backwards, he makes repeated efforts to slip underneath. The curious backward manœuvre at last succeeds. Gently, my little one, gently! Discreetly flattened out, you manage to slide under. That’s done it! We have our couple. A spermatophore, a granule smaller than a pin’s head, hangs where it ought to. The meadows will have their Crickets next year.

The laying of the eggs follows soon after. Then this cohabitation in couples in a cage often brings about domestic quarrels. The father is knocked about and crippled; his [342]violin is smashed to bits. Outside my cells, in the open fields, the hen-pecked husband is able to take to flight; and that indeed is what he appears to do, not without good reason.

This ferocious aversion of the mother for the father, even among the most peaceable, gives food for thought. The sweetheart of but now, if he come within reach of the lady’s teeth, is eaten more or less; he does not escape from the final interviews without leaving a leg or two and some shreds of wing-cases behind him. Locusts and Crickets, those lingering representatives of a bygone world, tell us that the male, a mere secondary wheel in life’s original mechanism, has to disappear at short notice and make room for the real propagator, the real worker, the mother.

Later, in the higher order of creation, sometimes even among insects, he is awarded a task as a collaborator; and nothing better could be desired: the family must needs gain by it. But the Cricket, faithful to the old traditions, has not yet got so far. Therefore the object of yesterday’s longing becomes to-day an object of hatred, ill-treated, disembowelled and eaten up.[343]

Even when free to escape from his pugnacious mate, the superannuated Cricket soon perishes, a victim to life. In June, all my captives succumb, some dying a natural, others a violent death. The mothers survive for some time in the midst of their newly-hatched family. But things happen differently when the males have the advantage of remaining bachelors: they then enjoy a remarkable longevity. Let me relate the facts.

We are told that the music-loving Greeks used to keep Cicadæ in cages, the better to enjoy their singing. I venture to disbelieve the whole story. In the first place, the harsh clicking of the Cicadæ, when long continued at close quarters, is a torture to ears that are at all delicate. The Greeks’ sense of hearing was too well-disciplined to take pleasure in such raucous sounds away from the general concert of the fields, which is heard at a distance.

In the second place, it is absolutely impossible to bring up Cicadæ in captivity, unless we cover over an olive-tree or a plane-tree, which would supply us with a vivarium very difficult to instal on a window-sill. A single day spent in a cramped enclosure [344]would make the high-flying insect die of boredom.

Is it not possible that people have confused the Cricket with the Cicada, as they also do the Green Grasshopper? With the Cricket they would be quite right. He is one who bears captivity gaily: his stay-at-home ways predispose him to it. He lives happily and whirrs without ceasing in a cage no larger than a man’s fist, provided that we serve him with his lettuce-leaf every day. Was it not he whom the small boys of Athens reared in little wire cages hanging on a window-frame?

Their successors in Provence and all over the south have the same tastes. In the towns, a Cricket becomes the child’s treasured possession. The insect, petted and pampered, tells him in its ditty of the simple joys of the country. Its death throws the whole household into a sort of mourning.

Well, these recluses, these compulsory celibates, live to be patriarchs. They keep fit and well long after their cronies in the fields have succumbed; and they go on singing till September. Those additional three months, a long space of time, double their existence in the adult form.[345]

The cause of this longevity is obvious. Nothing wears one out so quickly as life. The wild Crickets have gaily spent their reserves of energy on the ladies; the more fervent their ardour, the speedier their dissolution. The others, their incarcerated kinsmen, leading a very quiet life, have acquired a further period of existence by reason of their forced abstinence from too costly joys. Having neglected to perform the superlative duty of a Cricket, they obstinately refuse to die until the very last moment.

A brief study of the three other Crickets of my neighbourhood has taught me nothing of any interest. Possessing no fixed abode, no burrow, they wander about from one temporary shelter to another, under the dry grass or in the cracks of the clods. They all carry the same musical instrument as the Field Cricket, with slight variations of detail. Their song is much alike in all cases, allowing for differences of size. The smallest of the family, the Bordeaux Cricket, stridulates outside my door, under the cover of the box borders. He even ventures into the dark corners of the kitchen, but his song is so faint that it takes a very attentive ear [346]to hear it and to discover at last where the insect lies hidden.

In our part of the world, we do not have the House Cricket, that denizen of bakers’ shops and rural fireplaces. But, though the crevices under the hearthstones in my village are silent, the summer nights make amends by filling the country-side with a charming symphony unknown in the north. Spring, during its sunniest hours, has the Field Cricket as its musician; the calm summer nights have the Italian Cricket (Œcanthus pellucens, Scop.). One diurnal, the other nocturnal, they share the fine weather between them. By the time that the first has ceased to sing, it is not long before the other begins his serenade.

The Italian Cricket has not the black dress and the clumsy shape characteristic of the family. He is, on the contrary, a slender, fragile insect, quite pale, almost white, as beseems his nocturnal habits. You are afraid of crushing him, if you merely take him in your fingers. He leads an aerial existence on shrubs of every kind, or on the taller grasses; and he rarely descends to earth. His song, the sweet music of the still, hot evenings from July to October, begins at [347]sunset and continues for the best part of the night.

This song is known to everybody here, for the smallest clump of bushes has its orchestra. It is heard even in the granaries, into which the insect sometimes strays, attracted by the fodder. But the pale Cricket’s ways are so mysterious that nobody knows exactly the source of the serenade, which is very erroneously ascribed to the Common Black Cricket, who at this period is quite young and silent.

The song is a soft, slow gri-i-i, gri-i-i, which is rendered more expressive by a slight tremolo. On hearing it, we divine both the extreme delicacy and the size of the vibrating membranes. If nothing happen to disturb the insect, settled in the lower leaves, the sound remains unaltered; but, at the least noise, the executant becomes a ventriloquist. You heard him here, quite close, in front of you; and now, all of a sudden, you hear him over there, fifteen yards away, continuing his ditty softened by distance.

You move across. Nothing. The sound comes from the original place. No, it doesn’t, after all. This time, it is coming from over there, on the left, or rather from [348]the right; or is it from behind? We are absolutely at a loss, quite unable to guide ourselves by the ear towards the spot where the insect is chirping.

It needs a fine stock of patience and the most minute precautions to capture the singer by the light of a lantern. The few specimens caught under these conditions and caged have supplied me with the little that I know about the musician who is so clever at baffling our ears.

The wing-cases are both formed of a broad, dry, diaphanous membrane, fine as a white onion-skin and capable of vibrating throughout its whole area. They are shaped like a segment of a circle thinning towards the upper end. This segment folds back at right angles along a prominent longitudinal vein and forms a flap which encloses the insect’s side when at rest.

The right wing-case lies above the left. Its inner edge bears underneath, near the root, a knob which is the starting-point of five radiating veins, of which two run upwards, two downwards and the fifth almost transversely. The last-named, which is slightly reddish, is the main part, in short the bow, as is shown by the fine notches cut [349]across it. The rest of the wing-case presents a few other veins of minor importance, which keep the membrane taut without forming part of the friction-apparatus.

The left or lower wing-case is similarly constructed, with this difference that the bow, the knob and the veins radiating from it now occupy the upper surface. We find, moreover, that the two bows, the right and the left, cross each other obliquely.

When the song has its full volume, the wing-cases, raised high up and resembling a pair of large gauze sails, touch only at their inner edges. Then the two bows fit into each other slantwise and their mutual friction produces the sonorous vibration of the two stretched membranes.

The sound appears to be modified according as the strokes of each bow bear upon the knob, which is itself wrinkled, on the opposite wing-case, or upon one of the four smooth radiating veins. This would go some way towards explaining the illusions produced by music which seems to come from here, there and everywhere when the timid insect becomes distrustful.

The illusion of loud or soft, open or muffled sounds and consequently of distance, [350]which forms the chief resource of the ventriloquist’s art, has another, easily discovered source. For the open sounds, the wing-cases are raised to their full height; for the muffled sounds, they are lowered more or less. In the latter position, their outer edges press to a varying extent upon the insect’s yielding sides, thus more or less decreasing the vibratory surface and reducing the volume of sound.

A gentle touch with one’s finger stifles the sound of a ringing wine-glass and changes it into a veiled, indefinite note that seems to come from afar. The pale Cricket knows this acoustic secret. He misleads those who are hunting for him by pressing the edges of his vibrating flaps against his soft abdomen. Our musical instruments have their dampers, their sourdines; that of Œcanthus pellucens vies with and surpasses them in the simplicity of its method and the perfection of its results.

The Field Cricket and his kinsmen also employ the sourdine by clasping their abdomen higher or lower with the edge of their wing-cases; but none of them obtains from this procedure such deceptive effects as those of the Italian Cricket.[351]

In addition to this illusion of distance, which, at the faintest sound of footsteps, is constantly taking us by surprise, we have the purity of the note, with its soft tremolo. I know no prettier or more limpid insect song, heard in the deep stillness of an August evening. How often, per amica silentia lunæ,2 have I lain down on the ground, screened by the rosemary-bushes, to listen to the delicious concert of the harmas!3

The nocturnal Cricket swarms in the enclosure. Every tuft of red-flowering rock-rose has its chorister; so has every clump of lavender. The bushy arbutus-shrubs, the turpentine-trees, all become orchestras. And, with its clear and charming voice, the whole of this little world is sending questions and responses from shrub to shrub, or rather, indifferent to the hymns of others, chanting its gladness for itself alone.

High up, immediately above my head, the Swan stretches its great cross along [352]the Milky Way; below, all around me, the insects’ symphony rises and falls. The infinitesimal telling its joys makes me forget the pageant of the stars. We know nothing of those celestial eyes which look down upon us, placid and cold, with scintillations that are like blinking eyelids. Science tells us of their distance, their speed, their mass, their volume; it overwhelms us with enormous figures, stupefies us with immensities; but it does not succeed in stirring a fibre within us. Why? Because it lacks the great secret, that of life. What is there up there? What do those suns warm? Worlds like ours, reason declares; planets whereon life revolves in infinite variety. It is a superb conception of the universe, but, when all is said, only a conception, not supported by obvious facts, those supreme proofs within the reach of all. The probable, the extremely probable, is not the manifest, which forces itself upon us irresistibly and leaves no room for doubt.

In your company, on the contrary, O my Crickets, I feel the throbbing of life, which is the soul of our lump of clay; and that is why, under my rosemary-hedge, I give but an absent glance at the constellation of the [353]Swan and devote all my attention to your serenade! A dab of animated glair, capable of pleasure and of pain, surpasses in interest the immensity of brute matter.

“Then tripping to the woods the wanton hies

And wishes to be seen before she flies.”

—Virgil, Pastorals: book i.; Dryden’s translation. ↑

“Safe under covert of the silent night

And guided by the imperial galley’s light.”

—Virgil, Æneid: book ii.; Dryden’s translation

The enclosed piece of waste land, adjoining his house at Sérignan, in which the author used to study his insects in their natural state. Cf. The Life of the Fly: chap. i.—Translator’s Note. 

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