Japan 1892.
Alfred Parsons, Notes in Japan, Harper and Brothers, New York, 1896, Chapter: Early Summer in Japan.
Many times I walked to the top of this hill, sometimes in the clear brilliant moonlight … when all the world would have been silent but for the incessant chorus of myriads of frogs which came up from the rice-fields below.
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France 1893
Edward Harrison Barker, Two Summers in Guyenne: A Chronicle of the Wayside and Waterside, 1894, Chapter: In the Valley of the Isle.
When the sun is near setting, a sound very different from the warble of a bird is heard close by. It is some leader of a frog orchestra in the sedges of the canal giving the first note. It is like a quirk of gluttony just rousing from the torpor of satisfaction. The note is almost immediately taken up by other frogs, and the croaking travels along the canal-banks as fire would if there were a gale to help it. But the music only lasts a few minutes, for the hour is yet too early for the great performance. The frogs are only beginning to feel a little lively. It is when the sun has gone quite down, and the stars begin to twinkle upon the water, that the ball really opens. Then the gay tumult seems to extinguish every other sound, and to fill the firmament. Oh! they must have a high time of it, these little green-backed frogs that make so much noise throughout the warm nights of June
