A CUEIOUS PROOF OF INSTINCT. 175 



branch to branch, her marvellous instinct teach- 

 ing her to select the most suitable wood for the 

 purpose. The time occupied in constructing each 

 nest was from fifteen to twenty minutes. Her 

 earthly mission finished, she drops, fainting and 

 exhausted, from the branch, and dies. 



The male, who is always trilling his refrain, 

 goes on indifferent, or unconscious, that the task 

 of his faithful spouse is finished, singing ever, un- 

 til his time comes then he, too, drops beside her. 

 Thus the songs, one by one, cease not only the 

 cicada's, but all the forest choir and give place 

 to the winter blasts, that sigh in mournful music 

 through the leafless trees. These winds tear 

 from the trees the decaying branches, which the 

 instinct of the insect proclaimed were dying 

 months previously. From the nests that are in 

 these fallen branches, it is easy for the grub, the 

 larva of the cicada, to burv itself in the earth, its 



/ 



future home ; but those that come out whilst the 

 branch remains on the tree, have to make a 

 perilous descent. Fifty to sixty days from the 

 time the eggs were deposited, there emerged an 

 ugly little yellowish grub, covered with soft hair, 

 lively and bustling; with pinkish eyes, and with 

 feet armed with claws ; if on the tree, they rushed 

 directly to the end of the branch, and, without 



