cover many directly political articles that have appeared in our pages, and made a mark in their time. The memorable programme of Free Labor, Free Land, Free Schools, Free Church had nothing at all Positivist about it. could that programme and many besides from the same pen and others be compressed under the nickname of Academic Liberalism. There was too strong a flavor of action for the academic and the philosophic. This passion for a label, after all, is an infirmity. Yet people justly perceived that there seemed to be a certain undefinable concurrence among writers coming from different schools and handling very different subjects. Perhaps the instinct was right which fancied that it discerned some common drift, a certain pervading atmosphere. People scented a subtle connection between speculations on the Physical Basis of Life and the Unseen Universe, and articles on Trades Unions and National Education; and Professor Tyndall's eloquence in impugning the authority of miracles was supposed to work in the same direction as Mr. Frederic Harrison's eloquence in demolishing Prince Bismarck and vindicating the Commune as the newest proof of the political genius of France.

So far as the Review has been more specially identified with one set of opinions than another, it has been due to the fact that a certain dissent from received theologies has been found in company with new ideas of social and political reform. This suspicious combination at one time aroused considerable anger. The notion of anything like an intervention of the literary and scientific class in political affairs touched a certain jealousy which is always to be looked for in the positive and practical man. They think as Napoleon did of men of letters and savans: "Ce sont des coquettes avec lesquelles il faut entretenir un commerce de galanterie, et dont il ne faut jamais songer à faire ni sa femme ni son ministre. Men will listen to your views about the Unknowable with a composure that instantly disappears if your argument comes too near to the Rates and Taxes. It is amusing, as we read the newspapers to-day, to think that Mr. Harrison's powerful defence of Trades Unions fifteen years ago

caused the Review to be regarded as an incendiary publication. Some papers that appeared here on National Education were thought to indicate a deliberate plot for suppressing the Holy Scriptures in the land. Extravagant misjudgment of this kind has passed away. But it was far from being a mistake to suppose that the line taken here by many writers did mean that there was a new Radicalism in the air, which went a good deal deeper than fidgeting about an estimate or the amount of the Queen's contribution to her own taxes. Time has verified what was serious in those early apprehensions. Principles and aims are coming into prominence in the social activity of to-day which would hardly have found a hearing twenty years ago, and it would be suffi cient justification for the past of our Review if some writers in it have been instrumental in the process of showing how such principles and aims meet the requirements of the new time. Reformers must always be open to the taunt that they find nothing in the world good enough for them. "You write," said a popular novelist to one of this unthanked tribe, as if you believed that everything is bad." Nay," said the other, "but I do believe that everything might be better." Such a belief naturally breeds a spirit which the easy-goers of the world resent as a spirit of ceaseless complaint, and scolding. Hence our Liberalism here has often been taxed with being ungenial, discontented, and even querulous. But such Liberals will wrap themselves in their own virtue, remembering the cheering apophthegm that "those who are dissatisfied are the sole benefactors of the world."

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This will not be found, I think, too lofty, or too thrasonical an estimate of what has been attempted. A certain number of people have been persuaded to share opinions that fifteen years ago were more unpopular than they are now. A certain resistance has been offered to the stubborn influence of prejudice and use and wont. The original scheme of the Review, even if there had been no other obstacle, prevented it from being the organ of a systematic and constructive policy. There is not, in fact, a body of systematic political thought at work

in our own day. The Liberals of the Benthamite school, as was said here not many months ago,* surveyed society and institutions as a whole; they connected their advocacy of political and legal changes with carefully formed theories of human nature; they considered the great art of Government in connection with the character of man, his proper education, his potential capacities. Yet, as we then said, it cannot be pretended that we are less in need of systematic politics than our fathers were sixty years since, or that general principles are now more generally settled even among members of the same party than they were then. The perplexities of to-day are as embarrassing as any in our history, and they may prove even more dangerous. The renovation of Parliamentary government; the transformation of the conditions of the ownership and occupation of land; the relations.

between the Government at home and our adventures abroad in contact with inferior races; the limitations on free contract and the rights of majorities to restrict the private acts of universities; these are only some of the questions that time and circumstances are pressing upon us. These are in the political and legislative sphere alone. In Education, in Economics for realization in Literature, the problems are as many. Yet ideas are hardly ripe. We shall need to see great schools before we can make sure of powerful parties. Meanwhile, whatever gives freedom and variety to thought, and earnestness to men's interest in the world, must contribute to a good end. The Review has been an attempt to do something in this direction. I may well hope that the energy and intelligence of my successor will enable it to do more.-Fortnightly Review.

I AM spending a lazy holiday at the edge of a wood, and find life under a summer sky and in a summer temperature endurable, but nothing more. I recline on a mossy bank, and if not exactly sub tegmine fagi-for the tree overhead is a sturdy oak-I can yet appreciate the coolness of the shadow cast by the foliage above. A clear space in front allows the eye to wander at will over meadow-land and corn-field. Some idle cows, animated by like impulses to those which impel humanity, are congregated beneath the beeches in an adjoining meadow, and sweep with their tails the humming congregation of flies bent on annoying bovine existence, which placidly ruminates, insects notwithinsects notwithstanding. The humming of the flies forms well-nigh the only sound one can hear on this stillest of days, but now and then a rook overhead will adjudicate come domestic difficulty with a loud 'caw," and after a circling flight will once more sink to rest in the bosom of is family. Now and then a sleepy

* Fortnightly Review, April, 1882. NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXVI., No. 6

chirp reminds one of bird-existence above, but the laziness of living nature on a warm summer day is, to say the least of it, remarkable. In the thicket and apple-orchard beyond, I could find busy life in all its forms. I could show you my coleopterous friends the burying-beetles, hard at work interring the mouse that has come somehow or other to an untimely end; and to watch them toiling in their cuirassed jackets is a procedure exciting our sympathy much in the same way as you pity a fatigueparty of soldiers doing duty on a sweltering day. Bees, wasps, and flies, on their mission of pollen-distribution and flower-fertilization, are busy enough in their turn; but the heat is cogent argument against work, and, like the cows, one may profitably rest and ruminate.

To-day one's thoughts glance off at a tangent, excited by no very poetical stimulus perhaps, but by an incident which, however commonplace it may seem, nevertheless leads to the domain of the natural, and, I will add, is somewhat within the vein of poesy also. My stimulus has been the cawing of rooks,

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the humming of flies and bees, and the chirping of a grasshopper-also lazily inclined, if I may judge from the quiet and self-possessed manner in which it progresses between the grass-blades close by. From the hearing of such sounds, one's thoughts insensibly merge toward the diffusion of voice in lower life at large. The faint tinkle of a piano reaches my ear through the open window of the adjoining house. It is my hostess amusing herself with musical snatches, reveries, and reminiscences. Now it is a fragment of the last German waltz, musical, swinging, and so rhythmical that feet insensibly and automatically begin to describe imaginary circles, and the mind to conjure up visions of smooth waxed-floors, and gaslights and whirling couples, keeping pace to the melody. Now, the waltzphase has passed, and she strikes a sweeter chord. Í should know these notes. Of course-the Lieder ohne Wörte, most poetical of strains, wherein one can find sympathy and consolation for many troubles of body and mind, and from which one can weave words and phrases to suit the impassioned chords and the fleeting moods of the listener's mind. Just so. Mendelssohn has inspired me with a title at least. I shall take off the languor of laziness and hie me indoors; and while my good hostess is pleasing herself and unconsciously delighting me with Felix the divine, I will indite me a little article on the Songs without Words one may hear in halls with leafy canopies, and in cathedrals whose aisles are flanked by massive columns of gnarled stems, and whose roofs are formed by the blue vault of heaven itself.

In which classes of animals do we find sound to be produced in lower life? Such is a query not inappropriate in view of the nature and extent of the fields over which our inquiries may travel. Our starting-point will be found in the insects, and possibly, also, among the nearly related but zoologically distinct spiders. Upward we may travel through the mollusks, or shellfish, without meeting with any distinct example of sound-producing organs. Arriving at the lowest confines of man's own sub-kingdom, we pass to the fishes, and find therein some few but notable

examples of sound-producing animals. The frogs, with a not unmusical croak a sound expressive enough in ears which are open to hear-come next in order; and among the reptiles which succeed the frogs we find voice, it is true, but of indefinite type. Sweetest of all "songs without words " are those of the birds; and it is both curious and important to remark on the structural nearness of the birds to the reptilesthese two classes being related in a most intimate fashion in many points of structure and development. Above the birds come the quadrupeds, with voices high and low, for the most part unmusical and often harsh, but possessing as their crowning glory the songs with words of man. Thus we discover a wide field before us, in the investigation of the voices which speak in the unknown tongues of lower life. Let us see if the interest of the subject may be found to equal its extent.

There is little need, I apprehend, to preface our discussion with a discourse on elementary zoology, by way of informing readers that only in the vertebrates or highest group of animals do we meet with an approach to the vocal organs of man. Even in lower ver tebrates themselves, as in many fishes, an organ of voice may be altogether wanting, and sounds, as we shall hereafter see, may be produced in fashions other than those in which man produces vocal sounds. What may have to be said of the voice of higher animals may be left for our after-consideration. We may begin our researches in a humbler vein, and investigate the "droning flight," the busy hum, and the lover's chirpings of insect life. We find a suitable text in the grasshoppers which chirp so loudly in the meadows around. A very curious order of insects is that which includes the grasshoppers, lo custs, crickets, and earwigs as its chief representatives. They possess mouths adapted for biting, hinder wings which have straight ribs, and which are folded like fans, and, in the case of the first three insects, greatly elongated hind legs, conferring upon them a marvellous power of progressing by a series of leaps. As you hear the "*cricket on the hearth call to its mate, or the cricket of the field similarly attracting the

notice of Mrs. Grasshopper, you might well be tempted to believe that the insects possessed organs of voice analogous to those of higher animals. But the song of the cricket is truly one without words, inasmuch as it is produced by a mechanical process of mere friction, and not through any more elaborate mechanism, such as one expects to find in the vocal apparatus of higher life. It is well to remark that in all cases the specialized sounds emitted by insects are intended as "calls" to attract the notice of their mates. It is a notable fact that the female insects, in the majority of instances, do not possess the means for causing sounds, and when present in the latter this apparatus remains as a rule in an undeveloped condition. Aristotle of old was perfectly familiar with this fact as applied to the classic cicada; and a not over-gallant poet, Xenarchus, hailing from Rhodes, inspired possibly by the memories of many remonstrances from the female side of the house, seizes the naturalist's text, and declares

Happy the Cicadas' lives,

Since all voiceless are their wives.

An observation of Mr. Bates, in his "Naturalist on the Amazons," clearly shows the purpose served of the "stridulation"-as the faculty of producing sound is named in insects. A male field-cricket, like some gay troubadour, has been seen to take up his position at the entrance of his burrow in the twilight. Loud and clear sound his notes, until, on the approach of a partner, his song becomes more subdued, softer, and all-expressive in its nature, and as the captivated and charmed one approaches the singer she is duly caressed and stroked with his antennæ as if by way of commendation for her ready response to his love-notes. Thus insect courtship progresses much as in higher life, although, indeed, the siren-notes belong in the present case to the sterner sex, and thus reverse the order of things in higher existence.

The sound-producing apparatus in these insects consists of a peculiar modification of the wings, wing-covers, and legs. Thus the grasshopper's song is due to the friction produced by the first joint of the hind leg (or thigh) against

the wing-covers or first pair of wingsa kind of mechanism which has been aptly compared to a species of violinplaying. On the inner side of the thigh a row of very fine pointed teeth, numbering from eighty to ninety or more, is found. When the wing-covers or first wings are in turn inspected, their ribs or nervures" are seen to be very sharp and of projecting nature,, and these latter constitute the "strings," so to speak, of the violin. Both " fiddles

are not played upon simultaneously; the insect first uses one and then the other-thus practising that physiological economy which is so frequently illustrated by the naturalist's studies. Some authorities, in addition, inform us that the base of the tail in these insects is hollowed so as to constitute a veritable sounding-board, adapted to increase the resonance of the song. And this latter faculty is still more plainly exemplified in certain exotic insects allied to the grasshoppers; these foreign relations having the bodies of the males distended with air for the purpose of increasing and intensifying the sound. Again, while, as already remarked, it is the gentlemen-insects which produce the sounds, there exist a few cases in which the lady-insects appear to emulate the violin-playing instincts of their mates.

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The locusts are perhaps the most notable singers of their order. The locust's song has been heard distinctly at night at a mile's distance from the singers. In North America the katydid (Cyrtophyllus concavus), a well-known species of locust, is so named from the peculiar sound of the song, which closely resembles the words katy-did-shedid," and a writer describes this insect as beginning its "noisy babble" early in the evening as it perches on the upper branches of a tree, while rival notes issue from the neighboring trees, and the groves resound with the call of katy-did-she-did the livelong night." In the locusts, the two front wings (or wing-covers, as they are called, from their function of protecting the hinder and serviceable wings) produce the song. The right wing is the fiddle, the left serving as the bow. A special rib on the under side of the latter is finely toothed, and is rubbed backward and

forward over the upper ribs of the right wing, thus producing the chirp. When the crickets are examined, the disposition of the wing-covers is seen to resemble that of the locusts, but with the difference that both wing-covers have the same structure, each being alternately used as violin and bow. Of the grasshopper tribe, the locusts have perhaps attained to the highest pitch of musical efficiency; the grasshoppers themselves come next in order, while the crickets are the least-specialized and most primitive of all. It is a most noteworthy observation that in this group of insects a special organ of hearing is developed, the production of hearing powers thus taking place contemporaneously with the perfection of the song. Organs of hearing have been certainly discovered only in the insects under consideration. By some naturalists, the antennæ or feelers, borne on the head, have been credited with the performance of this function, but this view is problematical at the best. In the grasshoppers the "ears" consist of two organs, somewhat resembling drums in general conformation. These are found at the attachments of the last pair of legs. In the cricket and locust the hearing organs are found on the fore-legs. Thus it is both curious and interesting to find that the development of sounds and the production of ears to hear have taken place together in this group of insects, which geologically may claim to be one of the most ancient of the insect class. And the fact in question best illustrates to us that correlation between the varied ways and means of life which is so continually exemplified by the researches of workers in science byways.

We stray in pastures classical and especially Anacreon-wise, when we endeavor to investigate the biography of the cicada, whose marital happiness in the possession of a silent partner has already been remarked. Says Anacreon of the cicada:

Thee, all the muses hail a kindred being; Thee, great Apollo owns a dear companion; Oh! it was he who gave that note of gladness,

Wearisome never.

The Greeks of old delighted, and the Chinese to-day find pleasure, in the song of cicadas, inprisoned in cages like

birds; and as Kirby and Spence tell us, the emblem of music was a cicada sitting on a harp. This fashion of doing honor to the insect arose from the legend that Ennomus and Ariston, two rival Orpheuses, were contending for a prize in harp-playing. Ennomus broke a string of his harp during the competi tion, but a cicada, who, doubtless through a kindred interest in musica! science, had been a spectator of the contest, flew to the instrument, and seating itself thereupon, supplied with its note the place of the missing string. Little can we wonder, of course, that Ennomus gained the prize in this legendary competition. The sound-producing apparatus of the cicada was formerly believed to consist of a special modification of the breathing-openings of these insects. The breathing organs of insects consist of a complicated arrangement of trachea or delicate air-tubes which ramify throughout their bodies and convey air literally to every portion of their frames. The air is admitted to this peculiar system of air-tubes by means of apertures placed on the sides of the body and named spiracles; these openings being capable of closure at the will of the insect-a matter of absolute necessity for its safety during the rapidity of flight. The cicada sings during the day, and almost solely when the sun shines brightly. Virgil himself remarks of the insect that it sings, “sole sub ardente," and of the tropical species Mr. Bates remarks that "one large kind, perched high on the trees around our little haven, set up a most piercing chirp; it began," continues our author,

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with the usual harsh jarring note of its tribe, but this gradually and rapidly became shriller, until it ended in a long and loud note, resembling the steam whistle of a locomotive engine." Thus much by way of introduction to the cicada and its music.

Both sexes possess the musical apparatus, but that of the female is comparatively simple as compared with the

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drum" of her mate, and is never used, as we have seen, for producing sounds. The apparatus in question is situated in the last joint of the cicada's chest and in the succeeding and front joints of its tail. Briefly described, the "drum" or "timbale " of the insect