Certain grasshoppers make a sound when flying that is like a watchman's rattle--clacketty-clack, very rapidly repeated. There are also some moths and butterflies which have voices.
The "death's-head" moth makes a noise when frightened that strikingly resembles the crying of a young baby. How it is produced is not known, though volumes have been written on the subject.
The "mourning cloak" butterfly--a dark species with a light border in its wings--makes a cry of alarm by rubbing its wings together.
The katydids, crickets, grasshoppers and other musical insects are all exaggerated in the tropics, assuming giant form. Thus their cries are proportionately louder.
There is an East Indian cicada which makes a remarkably loud noise. It is called by the natives "dundub," which means drum. From this name comes that of the genus which is known as _Dundubia_. This is one of the few scientific terms from Sanskrit.
Entomologists have succeeded in recording the cries of many insects by the ordinary system of musical notation. But this method does not show the actual pitch, which is usually several octaves above the staff. It merely serves to express the musical intervals.
It is known with reasonable certainty that many insects have voices so highly pitched that they cannot be heard with the human ear. One evidence of this fact is that some people can distinguish cries of insects which are not audible to others. But even if there are a few notes lost to many of us, there is enough insect music to prove vastly entertaining to those who take interest in the insect world, and the peculiar methods of its inhabitants in communicating with each other.
Cattle is a term applied to the whole of that large variety of domestic animals known as the Bovine family. Naturalists have divided them into two primary groups--the hump-backed cattle (_Bos Indicus_) and the straight-backed cattle (_Bos Taurus_).
Some naturalists claim that these two groups are really only different varieties of the same species, while others claim that the marked differences in structure, habits and voice are such as would indicate a specific distinction.
The hump-backed variety is chiefly found in India and Africa, while the straight-backed cattle are common in all parts of the globe. Cattle seem to have been domesticated as far back as written and traditional history will take us.