148 WAYS OP THE SIX-FOOTED 



pronounced him the greatest of all musicians, and thus 

 he won his bride. However, we may safely predict that 

 their wedded life will be too full of happiness to last. 

 After a few weeks the sunshine, the music, the happi- 

 ness of wooing and winning will prove too much for 

 our hero, and one day he will beat his drum in a last 

 mad ecstasy and fall to earth and die from happy 

 exhaustion. His little wife may survive him only long 

 enough to cut some slits in some of the twigs of the 

 home tree and place in them rows of eggs from which 

 shall develop a family of hermits which shall come 

 forth and fill the world with their music seventeen 

 years hence, when our junior naturalists are men and 

 women grown. 



There are many broods of the cicadas in the United 

 States, so that they appear in different localities in dif- 

 ferent years. New York State has five well-marked 

 broods : one in the western counties is due in 1917 ; a 

 large brood on Long Island and near Rochester will 

 appear in 1919 ; another on Long Island in 1906 ; an- 

 other in the Hudson River Valley in 1911. The differ- 

 ent appearances of some of these broods have been 

 noted and studied for more than a century. 



Thus we know that these little hermit brothers 

 belong to one of America's most ancient races. It 

 will always be interesting for any junior naturalist 



