400 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1&19. 
Many, game to the end, even in their depleted condition still uttered 
purring remnants of their song. 
On June 15 at Somerset I heard one solitary male singing, but 
by the 17th all was over; the great horde of insects that emerged 
from the earth and underwent such spectacular transformations only 
three or four weeks ago was gone. Mutilated remains and dried 
bodies could still be found, but a thorough search revealed not one 
living insect. On June 29 a belated male v/as heard near Riverdale, 
Maryland, faintly but distinctly singing the Pharaoh song, then he 
ceased and was heard no more. 
From now on till the 24th of July there was no evidence of the 
late swarm of visitors except that of the scarred twigs on the trees 
and bushes and the red-brown patches of dying leaves that every- 
where disfigured the oaks and hickories. 
INTERNAL ANATOMY. 
In observing those mutilated cicadas, with their abdomens wide 
open clear up to the thorax, it strikes one as remarkable that a bird 
could do such a neat job of evisceration on a living subject. It seems 
that an insect here and there should have a piece of intestine trailing 
behind or should retain at least some remnant of its vitals. But the 
vivisection is never messed by so much as a protruding shred, and the 
cavity is always as clean and bare as if it never had contained 
anything. One's curiosity is aroused to know what might have been 
there in the natural state. The live cicada looks like a plump catch 
for any predaceous creature. So the writer was led to investigate 
its abdominal anatomy, and eventuall};^ dissected many specimens to be 
sure there was no nature faking — each was as empty as a rubber ball, 
as empty as those walking shells that so arouse one's pity and curi- 
osity. If I was surprised, one can imagine that the feelings of the 
birds vv^ere something worse — where they expected a juicy meal, the}'- 
found only an empty dish ! 
After considerable study the facts were ascertained as follows: 
The abdomen is almost filled by a great air chamber (fig. 7) whose 
anterior end narrows between the pillars of the tympanal muscles 
and tapers to a point in the prothorax ! The reproductive organs 
{Rpr) and the terminal part of the alimentary canal {Red) are 
crowded into a small space in the rear part of the abdomen. Other- 
wise the walls of the chamber appear to form an inner lining against 
the hard abdominal rings, so closely are they applied to them. Yet 
this is not really the case. If the dissected specimen be placed in 
water, a transformation appears ; a complicated intestinal tract swells 
up along the back; muscles, trachese, and nerves come into view, all 
packed about the outside of the thin, transparent walls of the air 
chamber. 
