BRITISH CICADA. 285 



Bid us lay in 'gainst winter rain, and poise 

 Their floods with an overflowing glass." 



Anacreon's hopper of the tree, and our British hopper of the 

 grass may now surely be allowed to share between them the 

 former's celebrated ode, and the palm of happiness and song. 



Our sketch comparative may possibly have excited in some 

 of our readers a desire to compare for themselves the persons 

 and the merits of our insect professors of the "joyeuse science;" 

 but this, with the tree-hopper, is no easy matter. The Tettix 

 of ancient Greece, and Cicada of ancient and modern Italy, 

 has a place indeed amongst British insects, but it has been 

 rarely seen in England, and only, we believe, in the New 

 Forest, whose shades, however, would not seem to have 

 resounded with its song. Allied insects there nevertheless are, 

 of English birth, some of them pretty, some of form remark- 

 able, but none very likely to attract attention, for lack of size 

 and song. There is, however, one species to be seen univer- 

 sally on hedges and in gardens all through the summer, which, 

 in shape and make, will help to give a notion of the true 

 Cicada. Though the person of this diminutive tree-hopper, at 

 least before it attains maturity, is screened in a singular manner 

 from common observation, there is scarcely an insect of more 

 easy discovery, when once we have penetrated the mystery of 

 its white veil. Who has not noticed, about the time of the 

 cuckoo's welcome advent, the leaves of hawthorn, hazel, wood- 

 bine the leaves, in short, of almost every common shrub and 

 plant in hedge and garden beginning to be besprinkled with 

 frothy masses, which they know, probably, by the familiar 

 appellation of "cuckoo-spit?" Let them examine for them- 

 selves, and they will find, imbedded in the centre of each 

 frothy "flocon," a little green, black-eyed insect, 1 from whose 

 body the froth is none other than a secretion, intended, it 

 would seem, to cover and protect its wingless infancy. If 



1 Teltigonia, or Cicada spumaria, Cuckoo-spit Frog-hopper. 



