20 



grew very slowly and there was no perceptible change in him for 

 about a year ; then he shed his skin for the first time, and thus, 

 insect- wise, grew larger. After a time he dug another cell near 

 another rootlet deeper in the ground ; but he never exerted him- 

 self more than was necessary to obtain the little food that he 

 needed. This idle life he found entirely satisfactory and the 

 days grew into months and the months into years. Only six 

 ti-mes in the seventeen years did our hermit change his clothes 

 and this w^as each time a necessit}', since they had become too 

 small. Judging from what the Senior Naturalist told me, I think 

 this is six times more than a Thibetan hermit changes his clothes 

 in the same length of time. 



What may be the meditations of a little hermit Cicada during 

 all these years we cannot even imagine. If any of the Junior 

 Naturalists ever find out the secret, they will be very popular 

 indeed with the scientific men called psychologists. However, 

 if we may judge by actions, the sixteenth summer after our her- 

 mit buried himself he began to feel stirring in his bosom aspira- 

 tions toward a higher life. He surely had no memory of the 

 beautiful world he had abandoned in his babyhood ; but he 

 became suddenly possessed with a desire to climb upward and 

 began digging his way toward the light. It might be a long 

 journe}' through the hard earth ; for during the man}- years he 

 may have reached the depth of nearl}' two feet. He is now as 

 industrious as he w^as shiftless before, and it takes him only a few 

 weeks to climb out of the depths into which he had fallen through 

 nearly seventeen years of inertia. If it should chance that he 

 reaches the surface of the ground before he is ready to enjoy life 

 he hits upon a device for continuing his way upward without 

 danger to himself. Sometimes his fellows have been known to 

 crawl out of their burrows and seek safety under logs and stakes 

 until the time came to gain their wings. But this is a very 

 dangerous proceeding, since there are many watchful eyes in 

 forests which belong to creatures who are very fond of bits of 

 soft, white meat. So our Cicada, still a hermit, may build him 

 a tall cell out of mud above ground. How he builds this "hut," 

 "cone " or " turret " as it is variously called, we do not know, 

 but it is often two inches in height, and he keeps himself in the 



