3^59 



The Homoptera present much greater variety in external form than the insects 

 of the preceding group, from which they differ in the following characteristics: 

 The beak arises from the lower and hinder part of the head, and is, therefore, 

 almost completely hidden from view. The fore-wings are, when present, of the 

 same texture throughout the whole of their extent, and, in many cases, placed 

 slanting, like the 

 sides of a roof, 

 when at rest. All 

 the members of the 

 section live by 

 sucking the juices 

 of plants; the 

 females being often 

 provided with a 

 horny ovipositor 

 generally com- 

 posed of three 

 toothed plates, 

 sheathed by two 

 valves for the 

 purpose of making 

 incisions in plants 

 where the eggs are 

 deposited. Unlike 



most bugs, they are not odoriferous insects, although many have special glands for 

 the secretion of a kind of white waxy substance, often seen covering part of their 

 body. The cicadas (Cicadidce} are stout-bodied insects, with a short broad head, 

 bearing prominent lateral eyes, and three distinct ocelli, which are often brightly 

 colored and resemble tiny jewels set near the middle of the forehead. The short 

 antennae are like small bristles inserted on the sides of the head just below the 

 front margin of the eyes. The prothorax is short and broad, and the mesothorax 

 also broad, on the upper side stretching back some distance behind to form a kind of 

 shield. The fore- wings are longer than the hind pair, both being often glossy and 

 transparent, but sometimes finely colored and more or less opaque. Cicadas remain 

 for a long period in the larval state, in many cases for several years; a North- 

 American species, Cicada septemdetim, being known as the seventeen-year locust, 

 since that period is the interval between one generation of winged insects and the 

 next. They inhabit chiefly the warmer regions of the earth, of the four or five 

 hundred species known, not more than eighteen being found in Europe, and these 

 mainly in its southern parts. The song of the cicadas, which has been celebrated 

 from very early times, is only produced by the male insects. " Happy," writes a 

 Greek poet, "are the cicadas' lives, for they all have voiceless wives." The 

 females are necessarily silent, since they are without the special apparatus for pro- 

 ducing sound distinctive of the males. The two scaly plates which in the latter 

 cover the under side of the base of the abdomen, are not, as sometimes supposed, 



EUROPEAN CICADAS, 

 i. Cicada orni; 2. C. plebja and larva. 



