172 LIVES ON DEW. 



delicate structure, edged with a kind of saw or 

 file-like apparatus, enables her to make a slit in 

 the bark of a tree, into which the eggs are dropped. 

 The eggs are white, somewhat oval, and quite flat, 

 so as to pack neatly into the slit. The larva is an 

 ugly little monster, with six legs, and a soft body 

 of a dirty-yellow colour. Two years of his life are 

 passed away in the earth, and the time arrives 

 when the dark damp tunnels are to be abandoned; 

 then from a creeping grub he changes into a 

 winged denizen of the air, and with his voiceless 

 mate spends a short but merry life, in ceaseless 

 exultant jubilee. 



That the cicada lives on dew is not by any 

 means a poet's fancy. Having assumed the 

 winged form, it loses the scissor-like mouth, that 

 served its purpose admirably in the subterranean 

 home for nipping up fine root-fibres, and has in 

 its place a kind of sucker-like snout, with which 

 it sucks up the juices of flowers and the sweet 

 sap that exudes from the bark of trees. Happy 

 as his life appears to be, he has many terrible 

 enemies to encounter during the two months of 

 his perfect existence. The brilliant oriole, in his 

 gorgeous livery of orange-and-black, hunts for him 

 under leaves and in the grass; and spying him 

 out, nips him with its sharp beak, and descending 



