NATURE'S CRAFTSMEN 



The male cicadas spend a few weeks flitting from 

 bough to bough and rolhng their mimic drums to sum- 

 mon their lady-loves to their sides. Then their lives 

 are ended. But the mother cicadas have serious work 

 to do before their death. They must provide for an- 

 other brood. Nature has endowed the female with an 

 instrument known as a "piercer," which has the power 

 and does the work both of an awl and of a double-edged 

 saw, or rather of two keyhole saws cutting opposite to 

 each other. With this instrument she cuts for an egg- 



EGG-TRENCHES IN TWIGS, MADE BY FEMALE CICADA 



trench a little V-shaped slit through the bark into the 

 fibre of a twig or the tender tip of a larger branch. 

 Within this she deposits a certain number of eggs. 

 Then she moves farther along the branch, saws another 

 slit, and again oviposits. Thus she continues until she 

 has exhausted her store of four or five hundred eggs. 



At length, weakened by her labors, she falters and 

 falls and soon dies. Like a good mother, her last care 

 is for her offspring, whom, however, she is never to see. 

 A month or six weeks of sunlight and song, of happy 

 courtship, of busy maternal duty— this is the sum of 

 the cicada's mature life after its long subterranean 

 career. And that is liable at any time to be cut short 

 by a raiding wasp, who stings and paralyzes it, and 



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