The South Australian Naturalist. 



SUMMER AND THE CICADA. 



(By T. W. Nettelbeck.) 



Who of us, in our ramblings through the hills on hot 

 summer days, has not heard the monotonous music of the 

 Cicada, and looked up into the lofty branches searching for the 

 noisy musician of the towering eucalypt ? I am sure the Nature- 

 lover would feel that something was missing among the trees 

 if he or she had not heard that busy songster during an 

 exploration in the hills on a summer day. One may frequently 

 hear a person remark, " Oh ! listen to the locusts ! ' ' But our 

 little friend, in truth, has little in common with a locust, as he 

 is not a gnawing or biting insect in the adult stage, but, on the 

 contrary, a sucking insect, and so busy is he getting his nectar 

 from the tree that he does not stop to sing between drinks. 

 Dame Nature has pro\dded a special musical apparatus beneath 

 the abdomen of the male only, which is operated by a separate 

 set of muscles, and produces that continuous drone with which 

 we are all so familiar. The female, though dumb, is not less 

 busy; she has been provided with a chisel-like instrument, 

 which is fixed in the top of the abdomen. With this she can 

 penetrate the soft surface of the bark, and, when the incision 

 is made, the eggs are laid in in little batches. Soon the small 

 white grub emerges from the egg, and makes its way to the 

 ground, where it lives on roots until it changes to the pupal 

 stage. It is provided with strong burrowing claws and a good 

 horny covering to fit it for its work underground, where it 

 lives till spring. It usually emerges from the ground during 

 the early hours of the morning, while the surface of the earth 

 is soft from the dew. Crawling up the nearest twig or tree 

 trunk, it dries itself, and the outer covering splits down the 

 centre of the back, and through this crack the insect crawls 

 slowly and unsteadily until it is quite out. 



Its wings have yet to spread out and dry, as they are still 

 wet and have a very pretty appearance like a little bundle of 

 tinted gossamer ; but in a couple of hours they are completely 

 grown and beautifully veined strong wings, and away flies the 

 happy cicada to join its fellows in the trees. I can never 

 forget an incident which occurred while I was collecting in the 

 scrub in New South Wales. I came across an old, care-free 

 swagman who, after learning that I was an insect hunter, 

 looked at me as though I was a kind of harmless lunatic ; the 

 cicadas were singing overhead, and he asked me about them. 

 After my simple explanation of their ways, etc., he said: "No 



