Reasoning from the analogy of stretched strings and membranes,
and of air vibrating in tubes, etc., we are justified in
concluding that the smaller the drum or the tube the higher
will be the note it produces when agitated, and the smaller and
the more rapid the aerial wave to which it will respond. The
drums of insect ears, and the tubes, etc., connected with them,
are so minute that their world of sounds probably begins where
ours ceases; that the sound which appears to us as continuous
is to them a series of separated blows, just as vibrations of
ten or twelve per second appear to us. We begin to hear such
vibrations as continuous sounds when they amount to about thirty
per second. The insect’s continuous sound probably begins beyond
three thousand. The bluebottle fly may thus enjoy a whole world
of exquisite music of which we know nothing. (Text.)--W. MATTIEU
WILLIAMS, “Science in Short Chapters.”
(1855)