Of True Bugs in General. 



behaved ourselves pretty well and they were going to let 

 us off light, there would be a large capital P in its stead. 

 Now, even as a boy, I had my grave doubts as to whether 

 these bugs were familiar enough with the English 

 language to write it, and though there was a very small 

 crop of them and they did no particular harm, I could 

 not find a P on any of their wings, though I sought it 

 carefully. They always wear a \V, though as a matter 

 of fact they do comparatively little damage any year 

 except that the twigs in which the female lays her eggs 

 are weakened by the borings and break off in a high wind. 

 But it is true about each brood flying in the air only once 

 in seventeen vears, though in the South, where they 



j <7> J 



expect trouble to come a little oftener than in the North, 

 there is a thirteen-year variety. 



After the grubs hatch in the pith of 

 the twig they crawl out and let go, 

 hoping that it won't be much of a 

 bump, a confidence not generally 

 shared by the six-legged tribe, whose 

 members, if they must drop to the 

 ground, do so on the end of a line, 

 paying it out as they descend. The 

 grubs bore into the earth and live on 

 the vegetable mold about some root Fig. 18. Hop-plant 

 till the time comes for reappearance, ^; e the true sexual 

 when they make a mud chimney and 

 come out in a new suit of wings. They fly up into the 

 tree-tops and work their drums like oil-cans to make a 

 joyful noise. They mean it for a love-song, but the wasps 

 constantly mistake it for the dinner-horn. A wasp con- 

 siders a seventeen-year locust or harvest-fly, to give it 

 its right name very fine eating; a little awkward to 

 carry, perhaps, but well worth the trouble. The different 



