SEVENTEEN-YEAR LOCUST—SNODGRASS. 40% 
front parts are again bent back, and the “flippers” grasp a new 
point of support. As these motions are repeated over and over again, 
the tiny, awkward thing painfully but surely moves forward, per- 
haps helped in its progress by the inclined tips of the flexible egg- 
shells pressing against it, on the same principle that a head of barley 
automatically crawls up the inside of your sleeve. 
Once out of the door no time is lost in discarding the encumbering 
garment, but it is never shed in the nest, under normal conditions. If, 
however, the nest is cut open and the hatching nymph finds itself in 
a free, open space, the embryonic sheath is cast off immediately, often 
the shedding begins while the posterior end of the insect’s body is 
still in the egg and the skin may be left sticking in the open end of the 
shell. Probably where this has been recorded as the normal process 
the observations were made on eggs in opened chambers. If the 
young cicada did not have to gain its liberty through that narrow 
corridor, it might be born in a smooth bag as are its relations, the 
aphids. 
Watching at the door of an undisturbed nest during a hatching day 
we soon see a tiny pointed head come poking out of the narrow hole. 
The threshold is soon crossed, but no more; this traveling in a bag is 
not a pleasure trip. A few contortions are always necessary to rupture 
the skin and sometimes several minutes are consumed in violent twist- 
ings and bendings before it splits. When it does break a vertical rent 
is formed over the top of the head, which latter bulges out till the 
cleft becomes a circle that enlarges as the entire head pushes through, 
followed rapidly by the body (fig. 8, 4). The appendages come out 
of their sheaths like fingers out of a glove, turning the pouches out- 
side in. The antenne are free first, they pop out and hang stifly 
downward. Then the front legs are released and they hang stiff and 
rigid but quivering with a violent trembling. In a second or so this 
has passed, the joints double up and assume the characteristic attitude 
while they violently claw the air. Then the other legs and the abdo- 
men come out and the embryo is a free young cicada (7). All this 
usually happens in less than a minute and the new creature is already 
off without even so much as a backward glance at the clothes it has 
just removed or at the home of its incubation period. Sentiment 
has no place in the insect mind. 
As the nymphs emerge from the nest one after another and shed 
their skins the glistening white membranes accumulate in a loose 
pile before the entrance where they remain till wafted off on the 
breeze. Each discarded sheath has a goblet form (5, 6), the upper 
stiff part remaining open like a bowl, the lower part shrivelling to a 
twisted stalk. The antennal and labral pouches project from the 
skin as distinct appendages but those of the legs are usually inverted 
