harsh, loud song consists of a series of cries--_can! can! can!
can!_--with no intervals of silence subdividing the poem into stanzas.
Thanks to its monotony and its harsh shrillness, it is a most odious
sound, especially when the orchestra consists of hundreds of performers,
as is often the case in my two plane-trees during the dog-days. It is as
though a heap of dry walnuts were being shaken up in a bag until the
shells broke. This painful concert, which is a real torment, offers only
one compensation: the Cigale of the flowering ash does not begin his
song so early as the common Cigale, and does not sing so late in the
evening.

Although constructed on the same fundamental principles, the vocal
organs exhibit a number of peculiarities which give the song its special
character. The sound-box is lacking, which suppresses the entrance to
it, or the window. The cymbal is uncovered, and is visible just behind
the attachment of the hinder wing. It is, as before, a dry white scale,
convex on the outside, and crossed by a bundle of fine reddish-brown
nervures.

[Illustration: 1. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.

2. THE ADULT CIGALE, FROM BELOW.

3. THE CIGALE OF THE FLOWERING ASH, MALE AND FEMALE.]

From the forward side of the first segment of the abdomen project two
short, wide, tongue-shaped projections, the free extremities of which
rest on the cymbals. These tongues may be compared to the blade of a
watchman's rattle, only instead of engaging with the teeth of a rotating
wheel they touch the nervures of the vibrating cymbal. From this fact, I