CRICKETS AND ASCENSION DAY, [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—In making an inquiry as to the origin Of the caging of crickets in Florence on Ascension Day, your correspondent has drawn attention to a practice which is not confined to that city. In the first place it should be mentioned that the cricket is not the only minstrel on the field. That insect for many years has had the credit which is largely due to the cicada, a similar insect.
"The cricket chirrup'd in his coat of mail, The brisk cicada answered him aloud, And rubbed the emerald armour of his wings."
The cricket has always been regarded as the harbinger ot good, and it is only natural that the people of Florence should associate either the cricket or the cicada with their invocations at Ascensiontide. In this country there are some Ascension- tide survivals, such as the blessing of the crops and the blessing of the sea, which takes place at that period. As to the caging of the cricket or the cicada, &Wager was 50 enraptured by their song that he kept some of the insects in a box in his study, and, according to Osbeck, the Spaniards, two centuries ago, confined the cicada -in a box for the sake of its song. Mouffet said that in Africa house crickets "are kept and fed in a kind of iron oven and sold to the natives,who like their chirp and consider it a great soporific."
I have read that the Sicilian cricket has the loudest noises while the cicada is in bad odour in the wine districts and in
South America. The wives of the traders are not like the Athenlans,who wore in their hair golden images of the insect, nor do they join Anacreon in singing :— " Happy Cicada, perched on lofty branches, Deep in the forest, cheerful as a monarch, Tasting the dewdrops, making all the mountains Echo thy chirping."
Trade is done in Southern Italian towns by the sale of crickets and cicadas in paper and wooden cages.—I am, Sir, &sc.,
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