12 THE PERIODICAL CICADA. 
Following briefly the history of the insect, the young ant-like larva, 
hatching from the egg a few weeks after the latter has been laid, 
escapes from the wounded limb, falls lightly to the ground, and 
quickly burrows out of sight, forming for itself a little subterranean 
chamber or cell over some rootlet, where it remains through winter 
and summer, buried from light, air, and sun and protected in a manner 
from cold and frost. It lives in absolute solitude, separated from its 
fellows, in its moist earthen chamber, rarely changing its position 
Save as some accident to the nourishing rootlet may necessitate its 
seeking another. In this manner it passes the seventeen or thirteen 
years of its hypogeal existence in a dark cell in slow growth and 
preparation for a few weeks only of the society of its fellows and the 
enjoyment of the warmth and brightness of the sun and the fragrant 
air of early summer. During this brief period of aerial life it attends 
actively to the needs of continuing its species, is sluggish in move- 
ment, rarely taking wing, and seldom takes food. For four or five 
weeks the male sings his song of love and courtship, and the female 
busies herself for a little longer period, perhaps, with the placing of 
the eggs which are to produce the subsequent generation thirteen or 
seventeen years later. At the close of its short adult existence the 
Cicada falls to the ground again, perhaps within a few feet of the 
point from which it issued, to be there dismembered and scattered 
about, carpeting the surface of the ground with its wings and the 
fragments of its body. Such in brief is the life round of this 
anomalous insect. 
So far as is known, other cicadas appear every year, usually in 
comparatively small numbers, and this yearly recurrence has led to 
the belief that the larval existence of these species is much shorter, 
if not limited to a single year. In the absence of direct experimental 
proof, however, it may be true that all cicadas have a long larval 
existence, and the absence of well-marked broods in other species 
or the complete breaking up or scattering of these broods, so that 
individuals emerge practically every year, have erroneously been 
taken to indicate a much shorter term of underground life.¢ 
If we can not satisfactorily explain the reason for the long larval 
life of the periodical Cicada or the conditions which led to the origin: 
a The writer recalls that in the summer of 1885 a very large species of Cicada (C. 
marginata Say) appeared in considerable numbers among the scrubby white oaks bor- 
dering a stream near Manhattan, Kans., and filled the air with its very loud and dis- 
cordant vibrations; yet, although familiar with and a frequent visitor of these woods 
in earlier and later years, no other experience with this particular species was had. 
It may be, therefore, that this species, which is more than twice the size of the period- 
ical Cicada, has an even longer life period. 
There are other western or Rocky Mountain species which give evidence of 
paralleling very closely in periodicity and number the eastern periodical Cicada. 
(See p. 36.) 
