Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/312

Rh semi themselves. But the reader need not expect anything entomological. Excepting, perhaps, the butter-flies, the insects of Japan are still little known to men of science; and all that I can say about semi has been learned from inquiry, from personal observation, and from old Japanese books of an interesting but totally unscientific kind. Not only do the authors contradict each other as to the names and characteristics of the best-known semi; they attach the word semi to names of insects which are not cicadae.

The following enumeration of semi is certainly incomplete; but I believe that it includes the better-known varieties and the best melodists. I must ask the reader, however, to bear in mind that the time of the appearance of certain semi differs in different parts of Japan; that the same kind of semi may be called by different names in different provinces; and that these notes have been written in Tōkyō.

Various small semi appear in the spring. But the first of the big semi to make itself heard is the haru-zemi ("spring-semi"), also called uma-zemi ("horse-semi"), kuma-zemi ("bear-semi"), and other 註