10 THE PERIODICAL CICADA. 
Sulphur Springs, informed me that he bad found them at a depth of 10 
feet below the surface. 
When ready to transform they invariably attach themselves to some 
object, and, after the fly has evolved, the pupa skin is left still adher- 
ing, as shown at Fig. 2, b. The operation of emerging from the pupa 
most generally takes place between the hours of 6 and 9 p. mn.; and 
ten minutes after the pupa skin bursts on the back the Cicada will have 
entirely freed itself from it. Immediately after leaving the pupa skin 
the body is soft and white, with the exception of two black patches on 
the prothorax. The wings are developed in less than an hour, but the 
natural colors of the body are not acquired till several hours have 
elapsed. These recently-developed Cicadas are somewhat dull for a 
day or so after transforming, but soou become more active, both in 
flight and song, as their muscles harden. or those who are not in- 
formed of the fact, I will state that the males alone-are capable of ‘‘sing- 
ing,” and that they are true ventriloquists, their rattling noise being 
produced by a system of muscles in the lower part of the body, which 
work on the drums under the wings, shown in Tig. 1, at g g, by alter- 
nately tightening and loosening them. The general noise, on approach- 
ing the infested woods, is a combination of that of a distant thrashing 
machine and a distant frog pond. That which they make when dis: 
turbed mimics a nest of young snakes or young birds under similar cir- 
cumstances—a sort of scream. They can also produce a chirp some- 
what like that of a cricket, and a very loud, shrill screech, prolonged 
for fifteen or twenty seconds, and gradually increasing in force and 
then decreasing. 
After pairing, the females deposit their eggs in the twigs of differ- 
ent trees; and though for this purpose they seem to prefer the oaks 
and the hickories, they oviposit in almost every kind of deciduous 
tree, and even in herbaceous plants and in evergreens. I have seen 
their eggs in the Chestnut, Locust, Willow, and Cottonwood, in peach 
twigs of not more than one-eighth of an inch in diameter, and also in 
the stems of the common Eupatorium; while R. H. Warder, of Cleves, 
Ohio, has found them in the following evergreens: Thuja occidentalis, 
Juniperus virginiana, and Abies canadensis, but was unable to find any 
traces of their work in either of our common pines—Pinus austriaca, 
P. strobus, or P. sylvestris. 
Dr. Harris (Inj. Ins., p. 212) has well described the mode of ovipos- 
iting, and it is only necessary to add that the female always saws with 
her head upwards, @. ¢., towards the terminal part of the branch, except 
when she comes in contact with a side shoot, when, instead of shifting 
a little to one side, she reverses her position, and makes two punctures 
in ap opposite direction to the rest, and thus fills up the straight row 
close to the base of the side shoot. The eggs (Fig. 2, e) are of a pearl 
white color, one-twelfth of an inch long, and taper to an obtuse point 
at each end. They are deposited in pairs, but separated by a strip of 
a ee eee sanguine pala blantis 
victuals . 
tis as 
