10 BRITISH CICADA. 



Our sketch comparative may possibly have excited in some 

 of our readers a desire to compare for themselves the persons 

 and the merits of our insect professors of the "joyeuse science " 

 but this, with the tree-hopper, is no easy matter. The Tettix 

 of ancient Greece, and Cicada of ancient and modern Italy, 

 has a place indeed amongst British insects, but it has been 

 rarely seen in England, and only, we believe, in the New 

 Forest, whose shades, however, would not seem to have 

 resounded with its song. Allied insects there nevertheless 

 are, of English birth, some of them pretty, some of form 

 remarkable, but none very likely to attract attention, for lack 

 of size and song. There is, however, one species to be seen 

 universally on hedges and in gardens all through the summer, 

 M hich, in shape and make, will help to give a notion of the 

 true Cicada. Though the person of this diminutive tree- 

 hopper, at least before it attains maturity, is screened in a 

 singular manner from common observation, there is scarcely an 

 insect of more easy discovery when once we have penetrated 

 the mystery of its white veil. Who has not noticed, about the 

 time of the cuckoo's welcome advent, the leaves of hawthorn, 

 hazel, woodbine the leaves, in short, of almost every common 

 shrub and plant in hedge and garden beginning to be be- 

 sprinkled with frothy masses, which they know, probably, by 

 the familiar appellation of ' cuckoo-spit ' ? Pinning on this 

 naiiic their faith as to its nature, few people, perhaps, have 

 ever taken the trouble to ascertain, a.< to the latter, the 



