I used to walk in the Boboli Gardens,
defying the heat, till they had eaten up the little shade some hedges
there afforded me; and till, by their incessant noise, all thought is
disturbed, and no line presented itself to my memory but
Sole sob ardenti resonant arbusta Cicadis[W];
[Footnote W:
While in the scorching sun I trace in vain
Thy flying footsteps o'er the burning plain,
The creaking locusts with my voice conspire,
They fried with heat, and I with fierce desire.
DRYDEN.
]
till Mr. Merry's sweet ode to summer here at Florence made one less
discontented,
To hear the light cicala's ceaseless din,
That vibrates shrill; or the near-weeping brook
That feebly winds along,
And mourns his channel shrunk.
MERRY.
This animal has four wings, four eyes, and two membranes like parchment
under the hard scales he is covered with; and these, it is said, create
the uncommon noise he makes, by blowing them somewhat like bellows, to
sharpen the sound; which, whatever it proceeds from, is louder than can
be guessed at by those who have not heard it in Tuscany. He is of the
locust kind, an inch and a half long, and wonderfully light in
proportion; though no small feeder, I should imagine, by the total
destruction his noisy tribe make amongst the leaves, which are now
wholly stript by them of all their verdure, the fibres only being left;
and I observed yesterday evening, as we returned from airing, another
strange deprivation practised on the mulberry leaves round the city,
which being all forcibly torn away for the use of the silk-worms, make
an odd fort of artificial winter near the town walls; and remind one of
the wretched geese in Lincolnshire, plucked once a year for their
feathers by their truly unfeeling proprietors.
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