INSECTS 



usually becomes restless, leaves the empty skin (/<?), and 

 takes up a new position several inches away (20). 



At this stage the cicada is strangely beautiful. Its 

 creamy-yellow paleness, intensified by the great black 

 patches just behind the head and relieved by the pearly 

 flesh tint of the mesothoracic shield, its shining red eyes, 

 and the milky, semitransparent wings with deep chrome 

 on their bases make a unique impression on the mind. 

 There is a look of unreality about the thing, which out of 

 doors (Plate 6) becomes a ghostlike vision against the 

 night. But, even as we watch, the color changes; the 

 unearthly paleness is suffused with bluish gray, which 

 deepens to blackish gray; the wings flutter, fold against 

 the back, and the spell is broken — an insect sits in the 

 place of the vanished specter. 



The rest is commonplace. The colors deepen, the grays 

 become blackish and then black, and after a few hours the 

 creature has all the characters of a fully matured cicada. 

 Early the next morning it is fluttering about, restless to 

 be off with its mates to the woods. 



The time consumed by the entire performance, from 

 the splitting of the skin (Fig. 118,5) to the folding of the 

 wings above the back {21), varies with different indi- 

 viduals, observed at the same time and under the same 

 conditions, from forty-five minutes to one hour and 

 twelve minutes. Most of the insects have issued from 

 the nymphal skins before eleven o'clock at night, but oc- 

 casionally a straggler may be seen in the last act as late 

 as nine o'clock the following morning — probably a be- 

 lated arrival who overslept the night before. 



Thus, to the eye, the burrowing and crawling creature 

 of the earth becomes transfigured to a creature of the air; 

 yet the visible change is mostly but the final escape of 

 the mature insect from the skin of its preceding stage. 

 Aside from a few last adjustments and the expansion of the 

 wings, the real change has been in progress within the 

 nymphal skin perhaps for years. We do not truly witness 



[198] 



