ZOOLOGICAL 
Female Cicada selecting a repository for the 
eggs. 
During this almost eternal 
night, the toiler sheds its outer 
covering four times, and with 
the fourth moult technically 
changes from the larval to the 
nymph form. There is~ not 
much difference in form and 
none in habits, but capelike flaps 
on the sides of the body indicate 
a development beneath of the 
wings that will be used in years 
to come. The final larval moult 
takes place in the thirteenth 
vear. 
It is at the end of its six- 
teenth year that the most 
marvelous of events transpires. 
To say 
a weak 
assertion 
marvellous, is to use 
term, even with the 
that here is a mani- 
festation of instinct—if instinct 
it is—that is more amazing 
than the fulfillment of the 
most spectacular of astronomi- 
cal prophecies. The latter are aiong mathe- 
matical lines and must transpire if the planets 
continue to move, but with the 
have billions of lowly forms, scattered over 
every type of soil where storms have raged on 
one and droughts have burned another, where 
cold ‘“‘waves” have rendered the soil as hard as 
granite to a yard in depth, or a belt of southern 
country that has been bathed in mild winter 
sun—no matter how varying the conditions— 
throughout the seventeen years if embraced 
within the area of the swarm, the toiling multi- 
cicada we 
The life cycle terminates in the Cicada's death. 
SOCIETY 
BULLETIN 19 
tudes will appear from the earth on time—the 
last of May—just seventeen years from the time 
their former generation was emancipated from 
subterranean darkness. 
In emerging on schedule time through vary- 
ing conditions of soil, they overcome such ob- 
stacles as cinder roads and even flooded ground. 
Nothing daunts them. 
tunnel and dig, always thrusting the earth back- 
ward and the wingless creature emerges, from a 
hole as round and clean as though a projectile 
from a rifle had pierced the ground. The earth 
is honeyeombed with the tun- 
nels of the emerging legions. 
The bore their 
through hard paths where man 
has trod or rolled cinders and 
ashes for after 
Myriad holes appear along the 
edges of cement boulevards— 
on time with the rest—and this 
has involved frenzied labor in 
horizontal tunneling when the 
surface was found unyielding. 
But most wonderful of all is 
the ingenuity displayed when 
the upward journey has met 
such grave obstacles as swampy 
ground and shallow water. 
The powerful fore-limbs 
toilers way 
year year. 
detour would 
too long to 
A horizontal 
be impossible 
complete the journey of emer- 
gence on schedule time. Prep- 
arations are at once made to 
meet this difficulty. The crea- 
Cicada eggs deposited in a perforated twig. 
