tif in a great opera. I shut my eyes, and I was
deaf to all other sounds while the wren sang. And as it dwelt on the
last note of its phrase, a cicada took it up on the exact tone, and
blended the two final notes into a slow vibration, beginning gently
and rising with the crescendo of which only an insect, and especially
a cicada, is master. Here was the eternal, hypnotic tom-tom rhythm of
the East, grafted upon supreme Western opera. For a time my changed
clearing became merely a sounding box for the most thrilling of jungle
songs. I called the wren as well as I could, and he came nearer and
nearer. The music rang out only a few yards away. Then he became
suspicious, and after that each phrase was prefaced by typical wren
scolding. He could not help but voice his emotions, and the harsh
notes told plainly what he thought of my poor imitation. Then another
feeling would dominate, and out of the maelstrom of harshness, of
tumbled, volcanic vocalization would rise the pure silver stream of
single notes.

The wren slipped away through the masses of fragrant Davilla blossoms,
but his songs remained and are with me to this moment. And now I
leaned back, lost my balance, and grasping the old stump for support,
loosened a big piece of soft, mealy wood. In the hollow beneath, I
saw a rainbow in the heart of the dead tree.

This rainbow was caused by a bug, and when we stop to think of it,
this shows how little there is in a name. For when we say bug, or for
that matter bogy or bugbear, we are garbling the sound which our very,
very forefathers uttered when they saw a specter or hobgoblin. They
said it _bugge_ or even _bwg_, but then they were more afraid of
specters in those days than we, who imprison will-o'-the-wisps in Very
lights, and rub fox-fire on our watch faces. At any rate here was a
bug who seemed to ill-deserve his name, although if the Niblelungs
could fashion the Rheingold, why could not a bug conceive a rainbow?

Whenever a human, and especially a house-human thinks of bugs, she
thinks unpleasantly and in superlatives. And it chances that
evolution, or natural selection, or life's mechanism, or fate or a
creator, has wrought them into form and function also in superlatives.
Cicadas are supreme in longevity and noise. One of our northern
species sucks in silent darkness for seventeen years, and then, for a
single summer, breaks all American long-distance records for insect
voices. To another group, known as Ful