148 



IxNSECT ARCHITECTURE. 



sioned his friends to send him some from more 

 southern latitudes, and he procured in this way spe- 

 cimens not only from the South of France and 

 from Italy, but also from Egypt. From these 

 specimens he has given the best account of them 

 yet published; for though, as he tells us, he had 

 never had the pleasure of seeing one of them alive, 

 the more interesting parts of their structure can 

 be studied as well in dead as in living specimens. 

 We ourselves possess several specimens from New 

 Holland, upon which we have verified some of the 

 more interesting observations of R^'aumur. 



Virgil tells us, that in his time " the cicadae burst 

 the very shrubs with their querulous music;"* but 

 we may well suppose that he was altogether unac- 

 quainted with the singular instrument by means of 

 which they can actually (not poetically) cut grooves 

 in the branches they select for depositing their eggs. 

 It is the male, as in the case of birds, which fills 

 the woods with his song; while the female, though 

 mute, is no less interesting to the naturalist on ac- 

 count of her curious ovipositor. This instrument, 

 like all those with which insects are furnished by 

 nature for cutting, notching, or piercing, is com- 

 posed of a horny substance, and is also considerably 

 larger than the size of the tree-hopper would pro- 

 portionally indicate. It can on this account be par- 

 tially examined without a microscope, being, in some 

 of the larger species, no less than five lines! in length. 



The ovipositor or auger (larifre) as Reaumur calls 

 it, is lodged in a sheath which lies in a groove of the 

 terminating ring of the belly. It requires only a very 

 slight pressure to cause the instrument to protrude 

 from its sheath, when it appears to the naked eye to 

 be of equal thickness throughout except at the point, 



' Cantu qneru'.ae rumpent arbusta cicadse. Georg. iii. 328. 

 t A line is about the twelfth part of an inch. 



