I am inclined to place the Cricket at the head of the choristers of spring.
In the waste lands of Provence, when the thyme and the lavender are in flower, the Cricket mingles his note with that of the crested lark, which ascends like a lyrical firework, its throat swelling with music, to its invisible station in the clouds, whence it pours its liquid arias upon the plain below.

From the ground the chorus of the Crickets replies.

It is monotonous and artless, yet how well it harmonises, in its very simplicity, with the rustic gaiety of a world renewed! It is the hosanna of the awakening, the alleluia of the germinating seed and the sprouting blade.

To which of the two performers should the palm be given?
I should award it to the Cricket; he triumphs by force of numbers and his never-ceasing note.

The lark hushes her song, that the blue-grey fields of lavender, swinging their aromatic censers before the sun, may hear the Cricket alone at his humble, solemn celebration.
But here the anatomist intervenes, roughly demanding of the Cricket: "Show me your instrument, the source of your music!" Like all things of real value, it is very simple; it is based on the same principle as that of the locusts; there is the toothed fiddlestick and the vibrating tympanum.
The right wing-cover overlaps the left and almost completely covers it, except for the sudden fold which encases the insect's flank.