The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment And The Tuning Of The World by R. Murray Schafer

insects are produced in a surprising number of ways. Some, such as those of the mosquito and the drone bee, result from wing vibrations alone. The general range of wing frequencies in insects is between 4 and upward of 1,100 beats per second, and much of the pitched sound we hear from insects is produced by these oscillations. But when the butterfly moves its wings at between 5 and 10 times per second, the result is too faint and too low to be registered. In the honeybee, the wing beat frequency is 200 to 250 cycles per second and the mosquito (Andes cantans) has been measured at up to 587 cycles per second (c.p.s.). These frequencies would thus be the fundamentals of the resulting sounds, but as a rich spectrum of. harmonics is also often present, the result may be a blurred noise with little discernible sensation of pitch.
    Another type of sound produced by some insects is that created by tapping the ground. Such is the case in several species of termites. Large numbers of termites may hammer the ground in unison, presumably as a warning device, at a rate of about ten times a second, producing a faint drumming noise. Julian Huxley writes: “I remember waking up at night in camp, near Lake Edward, in the Belgian Congo, and hearing a strange clicking or ticking sound. A flashlight revealed that this was emanating from a column of termites which was crossing the floor of the tent under cover of darkness.”
    Still other insects, such as crickets and certain ants, produce stridulating effects by drawing parts of the anatomy called scrapers across other parts called files. The result of this filing activity is a complex sound, rich in harmonics. The variety of these stridulatory mechanisms is enormous, and by far the greatest number and variety of sounds produced by insects are produced in this manner.
    Among the loudest of insects are the cicadas. They produce sound by means of ridged membranes or tymbals of parchment-like texture, close to the junction of the thorax and abdomen, which are set in motion by a powerful muscle attached to the inner surface; this mechanism produces a series of clicks in the same manner as does a tin lid when pressed in by the finger. The movement of the tymbals (amounting to a frequency of about 4,500 c.p.s.) is greatly amplified by the air chamber that makes up the bulk of the abdomen, so that the sound has been heard as far as half a mile away. In countries such as Australia and New Zealand, they create an almost oppressive noise when in season (December to March), though during the night they give way to the more gentle warbling of the crickets.
    It is difficult to describe cicadas to one who does not know them, and when the young Alexander Pope was translating Virgil’s line sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis (while the orchards echo to the harsh cicadas’ notes and mine), he fell on the expedient for his English readers of communicating the same idea by means of a more recognizable sound: “The bleating sheep with my complaints agree.”
    Classical literature is full of references to cicadas as is oriental literature. They occur in the Iliad (where the Greek word tettix, T€TTL£ , is often wrongly translated as “grasshopper") and in the works of Hesiod. Theocritus says that the Greeks kept them in cages for their singing ability, and this practice is still common among the children of southern lands. In Phaedrus , Plato has Socrates tell how the cicadas were originally men who were touched by the muses so that they devoted their lives to singing and, forgetting to eat, died to be reborn as insects. In Taoism, cicadas became associated with hsien , the soul, and images of cicadas are employed when preparing a corpse for burial, to assist the soul in disengaging itself from the body after death. The importance of the cicada in the soundscape of the South, as well as the symbolism it has provoked, has been overlooked since the comparatively recent northern drift of European and