reflected with surprise on the diversity of the means for producing music
with insects, and still more with birds. We thus get a high idea of the
importance of song in the animal kingdom. Please to tell me where I can
find any account of the auditory organs in the orthoptera? Your facts are
quite new to me. Scudder has described an annectant insect in Devonian
strata, furnished with a stridulating apparatus. (446/3. The insect is no
doubt Xenoneura antiquorum, from the Devonian rocks of New Brunswick.
Scudder compared a peculiar feature in the wing of this species to the
stridulating apparatus of the Locustariae, but afterwards stated that he
had been led astray in his original description, and that there was no
evidence in support of the comparison with a stridulating organ. See the
"Devonian Insects of New Brunswick," reprinted in S.H. Scudder's "Fossil
Insects of N. America," Volume I., page 179, New York, 1890.) I believe he
is to be trusted, and if so the apparatus is of astonishing antiquity.
After reading Landois' paper I have been working at the stridulating organ
in the lamellicorn beetles, in expectation of finding it sexual, but I have
only found it as yet in two cases, and in these it was equally developed in
both sexes. I wish you would look at any of your common lamellicorns and
take hold of both males and females and observe whether they make the
squeaking or grating noise equally. If they do not, you could perhaps send
me a male and female in a light little box. How curious it is that there
should be a special organ for an object apparently so unimportant as
squeaking. Here is another point: have you any Toucans? if so, ask any
trustworthy hunter whether the beaks of the males, or of both sexes, are
more brightly coloured during the breeding season than at other times of
the year? I have also to thank you for a previous letter of April 3rd,
with some interesting facts on the variation of maize, the sterility of
Bignonia and on conspicuous seeds. Heaven knows whether I shall ever live
to make use of half the valuable facts which you have communicated to me...