THE CICADA'S LAST SONG 251 
rash ancestor of yours. Well, I will tell you, for 
your own good. Guided by his noisy demonstra- 
tion, the hornet spied him on his twig, and in a 
second had pounced upon him and, like a high- 
wayman, stabbed him to the heart with a poisoned 
javelin. This cut short his song, as you may well 
suppose, and he fell in the grasp of his assailant. 
In another moment the hornet got a fresh hold 
upon him, and though your ancestor, like yourself, 
was much bigger than the hornet, those powerful, 
buzzing wings made an easy burden of him for 
quite a distance across the meadow. Here our 
captor took a rest, and after tugging that helpless 
cicada some distance up a high fence-rail, started 
off on another flight, which was brought to an 
end in the grass at the foot of a tree. In a mo- 
ment more the hornet was seen tugging its huge 
load up the trunk. When some ten feet in height 
a third flight was made, this time gradually set- 
tling down on the roof of a shed down-hill. Tug- 
ging his game to the edge of the shed roof, a 
fourth trip was made, and this landed the two in 
the neighborhood of a sand bank at the roadside 
in the valley below. 
A sand bank of some sort is usually the termi- 
nus of this strange ride of the cicada. Thus far 
many curious observers have followed the two, 
and wondered what it was all about. If they had 
cared to follow the matter to the end, they would 
