nEMIPTEllA. 185 



begins to make another nest to contain two more rows of eggs. 

 She is about fifteen minutes in preparing a single nest and 

 filling it with eggs; but it is not unusual for her to make 

 fifteen or twenty fissures in the same limb ; and one observer 

 counted fifty nests extending along in a line, each containing 

 fifteen or twenty eggs in two rows, and all of them apparently 

 the work of one insect.* After one limb is thus sufficiently 

 stocked, the Cicada goes to another, and passes from limb to 

 limb and from tree to tree, till her store, which consists 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, as to falter and fall in attemiDting to fly, and soon 

 dies. 



Although the Cicadas abound most upon the oak, they 

 resort occasionally to other forest-trees, and even to shrubs, 

 when impelled by the necessity for depositing their eggs, and 

 not unfrequently commit them to fruit-trees, when the latter 

 are in their vicinity. Indeed there seem to be no trees or 

 shrubs that are exempted from their attacks, except those of 

 the pine and fir tribes, and of these even the white cedar is 

 sometimes invaded by them. The punctured limbs languish 

 and die soon after the eggs which are placed in them are 

 hatched ; they are broken by the winds or by their own weight, 

 and either remain hanging by the bark alone, or fall with their 

 withered foliage to the ground. In this way orchards have 

 suffered severely in consequence of the injurious punctures of 

 these insects. 



The eggs are one twelfth of an inch long, and one sixteenth 

 of an inch through the middle, but taper at each end to an 

 obtuse point, and are of a pearl-white color. The shell is so 

 thin and delicate that the form of the included insect can be 

 seen before the egg is hatched, which occurs, according to Dr. 

 Potter, in fifty-two days after it is laid, but Miss Morris says 

 in fortj^-two days, and other persons say in fourteen days. 



The young insect when it bursts the shell is one sixteenth of 



* Sec also my communication in Downing's Horticulturist, Vol. Ill, p. 278, 

 Dec, 1848. 



24 



