The Cicada: leaving the Burrow 



four years in the ground. This long life is 

 not, of course, spent at the bottom of the 

 well which we have described: this is just a 

 place where the larva prepares for its 

 emergence. It comes from elsewhere, doubt- 

 less from some distance. It is a vagabond, 

 going from one root to another and driving 

 its sucker into each. When it moves, either 

 to escape from the upper layers, which are 

 too cold in winter, or to settle down at a 

 better drinking-bar, it clears a road by fling- 

 ing behind it the materials broken up by its 

 pickaxes. This is undoubtedly the method. 



As with the larvae of the Capricorn and 

 the Buprestes, the traveller needs around 

 him only the small amount of free room 

 which his movements require. Damp, soft, 

 easily compressed earth is to this larva what 

 the digested pap is to the others. Such earth 

 is heaped up without difficulty; it condenses 

 and leaves a vacant space. 



The difficulty is one of a different kind 

 with the exit-well bored in a very dry soil, 

 which offers a marked resistance to com- 

 pression so long as it retains its aridity. That 

 the larva, when beginning to dig its passage, 

 flung back part of the excavated materials 

 into an earlier gallery which has now disap- 



33 



