10 BRITISH CICADA. 



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 "joyeiise 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 re- 

 sounded 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, woodbine the leaves, in short, of almost every com- 

 mon shrub and plant in hedge and garden beginning to be 

 besprinkled with frothy masses, which they know probably, 

 by the familar appellation of ' cuckoo-spit ' ? Pinning on this 

 name their faith as to its nature, few people, perhaps, have 

 ever taken the trouble to ascertain, as to the latter, the 



