SEVEISTTEEN-YEAR LOCUST SNODGRASS. 391 
and white (IS). Here the creature usually becomes restless, leaves 
the empty skin (10), 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 unrealitj^ about the thing, which, out of doors 
(pi. 2), becomes a ghostlike vision against the night. But, even 
as we watch, the color changes, the unearthly paleness is suffused 
Avith bluish gray, which deepens to blackish graj. 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 full}'' 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. 3, S) to the folding of the wings above the back 
(^i), varied with different individuals, observed at the same time 
and under the same conditions, from 45 minutes to 1 hour and 12 
minutes. Most of the insects had issued from the pupal skins before 
11 o'clock at night, but occasionally a straggler might be seen in the 
last act as late as 9 o'clock the following morning. Such were prob- 
ably belated arrivals 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 ex- 
pansion of the wings, the real change had been in progress within 
the pupal skin perhaps for years. We do not truly witness the trans- 
formation; we see only the throwing off of the shell that concealed 
it, as the circus performer strips off the costume of the clown and 
appears already dressed in that of the accomplished acrobat. 
THE ADULTS. 
The adult cicada bears the stamp of individuality; he does not 
closely resemble any of our everyday insects ; he has a different per- 
sonality ; he impresses us as a " distinguished foreigner in our midst." 
Of course, he has near relations; there are numerous other members 
of his family, the insects commonly called "locusts," whose shrill 
voices are more familiar to us than their faces, but whose empty 
pupal skins almost everyone has seen adhering to fence posts and 
