I have heard that those who are not disciples of Wagner find it necessary to undergo a process of education ere they acquire an unaffected taste for the composer’s masterpieces.  Possibly those who have not listened, wet season after wet season, to the light-hearted chant, may be inclined to suggest that there can be no such thing as music in the panting bellows of a North Queensland frog.  But music “is of a relative nature, and what is harmony to one ear may be dissonance to another.”  The Chinese opera proves that “nations do not always express the same passions by the same sounds.”  If one obtains music from the clang and clamour of full-throated frogs, may it not be because his ears are more attuned to natural than to artificial harmonies, not because, of any defect in, or aberration of, hearing, or any lack of melody on the part of the frogs?

ACTS WELL ITS PART

“A living drollery!  Now I will believe
That there are unicorns; that in Arabia
There is one tree, the phoenix throne; one phoenix
At this hour reigning.”

Few insects repay observation better than the mantis and the stick insect, which generally, of most voracious habits themselves, resort to all manner of disguises and devices to elude their enemies and lure their prey.  Nearly all furnish striking examples of colour protection.  One variety of the mantis here is black and rugged, and is to be found only on charred wood.  The wing-cases present the characteristic grain and glint of fresh charcoal, distinctly showing the influence of the condition of its environment.  Another is grey, to match its groundwork of dead wood; another brown and slightly hairy, to coincide with the bark of the particular eucalyptus upon which it lurks.  Another, and the most graceful, resembles two bright green leaves, the midrib and the nerve system being imitated perfectly.

Among the most singular is one of the stick insects (PHASMA).  A fair specimen may be a foot and more long.  The body presents the general appearance of a dry stick; the posterior legs, held at different and erratic angles to the grey and brown body, are as sunburnt twigs; the intermediary pair seem to be used primarily as supports.  The anterior are stretched out to their fullest extent parallel to each other, and so close together as to resemble one tapering termination, with the head closely packed between the thighs, in each of which is a complementary depression for its accommodation.  When the insect is motionless it is difficult to detect.  By its long posterior legs, stiffly held aloft, it proclaims to every bird—­“Do not be so absurd as to imagine these dry twigs to be legs, belonging to a body good to eat.”  And if the bird does not take the resemblance for granted and is inquisitive and approaches too familiarly, it finds that instead of a dinner it has discovered a snake.  The insect seems to say—­“I am a stick!  Look at the twigs.  No, I am a snake!  Long live the serpent!”