A CURIOUS PROOF OF INSTINCT. 175 
branch to branch, her marvellous instinct teach- 
ing her to select the most suitable wood for the 
purpose. The time occupied in constructing each 
nest was from fifteen to twenty minutes. Her 
earthly mission finished, she drops, fainting and 
exhausted, from the branch, and dies. 
The male, who is always trilling his refrain, 
goes on indifferent, or unconscious, that the task 
of his faithful spouse is finished, smging ever, un- 
til his time comes—then he, too, drops beside her. 
Thus the songs, one by one, cease—not only the 
cicada’s, but all the forest choir—and give place 
to the winter blasts, that sigh in mournful music 
through the leafless trees. These winds tear 
from the trees the decaying branches, which the 
instinct of the insect proclaimed were dying 
months previously. From the nests that are in 
these fallen branches, it is easy for the grub, the 
larva of the cicada, to bury itself in the earth, its 
future home; but those that come out whilst the 
branch remains on the tree, have to make a 
perilous descent. Fifty to sixty days from the 
time the eggs were deposited, there emerged an 
ugly little yellowish grub, covered with soft hair, 
lively and bustling; with pinkish eyes, and with 
feet armed with claws; if on the tree, they rushed 
directly to the end of the branch, and, without 
