nervures. From this oscillation a ticking sound will result.

Twenty years ago all Paris was buying a silly toy, called, I think, the
cricket or _cri-cri_. It was a short slip of steel fixed by one end to a
metallic base. Pressed out of shape by the thumb and released, it
yielded a very distressing, tinkling _click_. Nothing else was needed to
take the popular mind by storm. The "cricket" had its day of glory.
Oblivion has executed justice upon it so effectually that I fear I shall
not be understood when I recall this celebrated device.

The membranous cymbal and the steel cricket are analogous instruments.
Both produce a sound by reason of the rapid deformation and recovery of
an elastic substance--in one case a convex membrane; in the other a slip
of steel. The "cricket" was bent out of shape by the thumb. How is the
convexity of the cymbals altered? Let us return to the "church" and
break down the yellow curtain which closes the front of each chapel. Two
thick muscular pillars are visible, of a pale orange colour; they join
at an angle, forming a ~V~, of which the point lies on the median line
of the insect, against the lower face of the thorax. Each of these
pillars of flesh terminates suddenly at its upper extremity, as though
cut short, and from the truncated portion rises a short, slender tendon,
which is attached laterally to the corresponding cymbal.

There is the whole mechanism, no less simple than that of the steel
"cricket." The two muscular columns contract and relax, shorten and
lengthen. By means of its terminal thread each sounds its cymbal, by
depressing it and immediately releasing it, when its own elasticity
makes it spring back into shape. These two vibrating scales are the
source of the Cigale's cry.