Do you wish to convince yourself of the efficiency of this mechanism?
Take a Cigale but newly dead and make it sing. Nothing is simpler. Seize
one of these muscular columns with the forceps and pull it in a series
of careful jerks. The extinct _cri-cri_ comes to life again; at each
jerk there is a clash of the cymbal. The sound is feeble, to be sure,
deprived of the amplitude which the living performer is able to give it
by means of his resonating chambers; none the less, the fundamental
element of the song is produced by this anatomist's trick.

Would you, on the other hand, silence a living Cigale?--that obstinate
melomaniac, who, seized in the fingers, deplores his misfortune as
loquaciously as ever he sang the joys of freedom in his tree? It is
useless to violate his chapels, to break his mirrors; the atrocious
mutilation would not quiet him. But introduce a needle by the lateral
aperture which we have named the "window" and prick the cymbal at the
bottom of the sound-box. A little touch and the perforated cymbal is
silent. A similar operation on the other side of the insect and the
insect is dumb, though otherwise as vigorous as before and without any
perceptible wound. Any one not in the secret would be amazed at the
result of my pin-prick, when the destruction of the mirrors and the
other dependencies of the "church" do not cause silence. A tiny
perforation of no importance to the insect is more effectual than
evisceration.

The dampers, which are rigid and solidly built, are motionless. It is
the abdomen itself which, by rising and falling, opens or closes the
doors of the "church." When the abdomen is lowered the dampers exactly
cover the chapels as well as the windows of the sound-boxes. The sound
is then muted, muffled, diminished. When the abdomen rises the chapels
are open, the windows unobstructed, and the sound acquires its full