358 TENANTS OF AN OLD FARM. 



and passes from limb to limlj. and from tree to tree, till 

 her store of four or five hundred eggs is exhausted. 

 At length she becomes so weak by her incessant labors 

 to provide for a succession of her kind, that she falters 

 and falls in attempting to fly, and soon dies." 



" Poor thing !" exclaimed the Mistress. 



"Well, I say that it's a mighty lucky thing," Hugh 

 remarked, " that so many of them twigs do wither and 

 fall, and cause the eggs to die inside uv 'em. I reckon 

 ther wouldn't be twigs enough to accommodate the 

 risin' generations ef all them eggs hatched out." 



" Harris says that after oviposition the female saws 

 the branch partly off below the eggs, so that the wind 

 may twist off the tip end containing the eggs and let it 

 fall to the ground. Certainly many of the punctured 

 twigs do break off and die, and in years of invasion the 

 oak forests often have a gloomy and disheveled ap- 

 pearance from the number of branch-tips parti}- twisted 

 of}', and hanging with their dead leaves ready to fall. 

 ]5ut it is doubtful if this is the result of a set purpose 

 on the part of the mother Cicada, for a great majority 

 of the incised twigs remain green and recover from 

 their wounds. Indeed, it is probable that the eggs 

 seldom hatch in those twigs which break off and l)ecome 

 dry, and that the moisture of the living branch is 

 necessary to the life and development of the egg. In 

 the healing of the punctured parts of the limb a knot 

 usually forms over each jnmcture." 



"Doctor," said Abby, who had been examining the 

 little bundle of twigs by which I had illustrated my 



