Observations on the habits and natural surroundings of insects made during the 'Skeat expedition' to the Malay peninsula, 1899-1900 / by Nelson Annandale.
- Nelson Annandale
- Date:
- 1900
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Observations on the habits and natural surroundings of insects made during the 'Skeat expedition' to the Malay peninsula, 1899-1900 / by Nelson Annandale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![to the word “ riang ” (to call back) pronounced very rapidly and repeatedly. All four species of beetle are on sale for food in the local markets of Patalung, and their grubs, which are found in the earth or under fallen trees, are eaten also. (A conventional representation of the grubs is often carved on rice-stirrers and other objects of household use by the Malays, who call them “ Ulat Kihi.”) Both beetles and CicadsB are either boiled or fried in cocoanut-oil. The latter have very little flavour of any sort, and what they have is vegetable rather than animal. Remarks.—The existence of auditory organs in the Cicadae has not been demonstrated with certainty. The insects must indeed be deaf if they mistake the sound of clapping for tlie squeaky whirr of the male’s stridulation. It is evident, however, that the females have some perception of rhythm, if not of sound. May not this perception be due to vibrations produced in the opercula of the stridulating apparatus ? The opercula are often well developed in the voiceless females, though they differ in shape from those of the males. The males, supposing that the perceptive organ were situated in the stridulating apparatus, would be deafened by their own song; as Sharp points out when dealing with Swinton’s theory that one of the membranes of the apparatus itself, a membrane which apparently is only present in the male, is an auditory organ. But there is no need for the males to hear their own song, and no proof that they do so. Though only one species of Cicada is attracted by the particular rhythm with which the people of Patalung clap their hands, another rhythm might attract another form. The several species of Cicadae inhabiting the same country undoubtedly sing in different rhythm ^ from one another. The song of this species is fairly monotonous and unbroken, though it rises and falls to a slight extent. That of the large form Pomponia imperatoria, which restricts itself to deep jungle, rises in a series of trills, each of which concludes with a kind of click. Each section of the song is faster, louder, and clearer than the one which preceded it; until, about five minutes after the Cicada’s settling, the noise suddenly comes to au end, as the insect flies off to another tree, where it commences again. The sound produced by this species is, at the beginning of the song, like the winding-up of a large clock, and ends by being comparable to the notes of a penny whistle. Another insect, commonly heard at night in the jungle, presumably also a Cicada, has a clear, loud, clarion-like call which can be heard for a great distance. The sounds in a Malayan jungle after dark may justly be com- pared to those in the machinery-hall of an exhibition at the busiest time of day, and their volume increases materially before the coming of dawn. The body of the din is the work of small Cicadae, like the edible species, but the true riang-riang and certain Locustids have no mean share in its production. In some places the “ Singing ^ See Itiley, Proc. Amer. Assoc. Adv. Science, vol. xxiv. p. 331. [25]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22406451_0029.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
