ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 21 
u 
Like 
mummy cases, the cast shells 
adorn the twigs. 
courtship; for death is but 
a few weeks distant. Be- 
neath the body of the male 
are two organs covered 
with protective flaps that 
are best described as minia- 
ture kettle drums. Covered 
with tightly-stretched mem- 
brane they are vibrated by 
an almost microscopic air 
valve. After about a week 
of the droning love song, 
the female cicada becomes 
of considerable intciest to 
mankind. 
Though both sexes of the cicada are provided 
with a beak for sucking plant juices, they do 
little feeding in the imago stage. They have 
little time for feeding, in fact, as courtship is 
too short and death too near. The female is 
provided with an auger-like appendage beneath 
the abdomen. This boring instrument is used in 
imbedding the eggs in slender branches. And 
here occurs the only harm that comes with the 
locust swarms. With this phase of the cicada’s 
life, we complete the cycle of this creature’s 
existence through its seventeen years of life and 
return to a phase explained in an early para- 
graph in this strange story, where the eggs are 
noted to rest snugly within a twig. But it is of 
interest to explain how the female employs the 
ovipositor. 
The trunks of the trees festooned with dried casts. 
Selecting terminal stems, where the bark is 
soft and green, she literally drills a hole with 
the sharp instrument at an oblique angle to the 
pithy center of the twig. By an expanding 
process at the tip—the ovipositor enlarges the 
cavity at the bottom and from one to two eggs 
are secreted. Crawling up the stem, she makes 
a slit in the bark for a fraction of an inch, then 
drills for another insertion of eggs. After about 
a dozen perforations, she flies to another branch. 
The attacked twig looks as though a large pin 
had been sunken at regular intervals and heavily 
dragged between the perforations. Throughout 
the woodlands, innumerable branches are to be 
seen thus attacked. Masses of injured stems 
even can be detected at a considerable distance 
owing to the uniform injury and protruding 
fibers of the injured surface. A considerable 
portion of the injured 
i twigs wither and die and 
the woods are soon spotted 
with sprays of dead, brown 
leaves, imparting to the 
forests an aspect of sear- 
ing from a fire. This is 
the only material damage 
done by the cicada swarms. 
Its effect upon the forests 
is superficial, but serious 
if orchards involved. 
Fruit trees occasionally are 
attacked, but seldom to a 
serious extent if wood- 
A cast shell 
which the 
are 
split through 
emerged. 
showing 
cicada 
