THE cicada's last SONG 25 1 



rash ancestor of yours. Well, I will tell you, for 

 your own good. Guided by his noisy demonstra- 

 tion, the hornet spied him on his twig, and in a 

 second had pounced upon him and, like a high- 

 wayman, stabbed him to the heart with a poisoned 

 javelin. This cut short his song, as you may well 

 suppose, and he fell in the grasp of his assailant. 

 In another moment the hornet got a fresh hold 

 upon him, and though your ancestor, like yourself, 

 was much bigger than the hornet, those powerful, 

 buzzing wings made an easy burden of him for 

 quite a distance across the meadow. Here our 

 captor took a rest, and after tugging that helpless 

 cicada some distance up a high fence-rail, started 

 off on another flight, which was brought to an 

 end in the grass at the foot of a tree. In a mo- 

 ment more the hornet was seen tugging its huge 

 load up the trunk. When some ten feet in height 

 a third flight was made, this time gradually set- 

 tling down on the roof of a shed down-hill. Tug- 

 ging his game to the edge of the shed roof, a 

 fourth trip was made, and this landed the two in 

 the neighborhood of a sand bank at the roadside 

 in the valley below. 



A sand bank of some sort is usually the termi- 

 nus of this strange ride of the cicada. Thus far 

 many curious observers have followed the two, 

 and wondered what it was all about. If they had 

 cared to follow the matter to the end, they would 



