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wonderful insects I will tell you the story of one insect which 

 any one of you may find this summer if you live in one of the 

 counties above mentioned. 



The Story of Little Hermit Brother, Cicada 



septendecim. 



Seventeen years ago this June, when perhaps the parents of 

 some of the Junior Naturalists were themselves school children, 

 a Cicada mother made with her ovipositor a little slit or cavity 

 in an oak twig, and in this slit placed in very neat order 

 two rows of eggs. Six weeks later there hatched from one of 

 these eggs a pale, lively little creature, that to the naked eye 

 looked like a tiny white ant. However, if we could have 

 examined him through a lens, we would have found him very 

 different from an ant ; for his two front legs were shaped 

 somewhat like lobsters' big claws, and instead of jaws like an 

 ant, he simply had a long beak that was hollow like a tube. 

 After he came out of his egg he ran about the tree and seemed 

 interested in everything he saw for a time. Then, suddenly he 

 went to the side of a limb and deliberately fell oiT. To his little 

 eyes the ground below was invisible ; so our small Cicada showed 

 great faith when he practically jumped off the edge of his world 

 into space. He was such a speck of a creature that the breeze 

 took him and lifted him gently down, as if he were the petal of a 

 flower, and he alighted on the earth unhurt and probably much 

 delighted with his sail through the air. At once he commenced 

 hunting for some little crevice in the earth ; and when he found 

 it he went to the bottom of it and with his shovel-like fore-feet 

 began digging downward. I wonder if he stopped to give a last 

 look at sky, sunshine, and the beautiful green world before he 

 bade them good-bye for seventeen long years. If so, he did it hur- 

 riedly, for he was intent upon reaching something to eat. This 

 he finally found a short distance below the surface of the ground, 

 in the shape of a juicy rootlet of the great tree above. Into this 

 he inserted his beak and began to take the sap as we take lemon- 

 ade through a straw. He made a little cell around himself and 

 then he found existence quite blivSsful. He ate very little and 



