Cicadas 
JN the summer, especially as evening approaches, the visitor is 
often welcomed by the love-song of those interesting but 
elusive creatures — the Cicadas. Seated high up on the tops of 
the gum trees, the males shrill their peculiar call to the voiceless 
females — a call which, on the approach of something unusual, 
instantly ceases as though by signal. It is rarely that the ordinary 
person sees the adults, but search on the trunks of the trees 
will frequently reveal numbers of their last change of clothing. 
The young stages are spent in the ground, sucking the sap of 
the tree roots. When ready to assume the mature form, they 
burrow out and climb a short distance up the boles of the trees. 
After resting a while, their skins split along the back of the 
head and thorax and the adults crawl out, soon to dry their wings 
and legs in readiness to fly and join their fellows. 
A number of species of Cicadas may be met with in the 
reserves, from the small ones in the low scrub and about half 
an inch long, to the large, noisv fellows in the tree tops, up to 
two inches across the wings. The latter are blackish with bright 
red eyes, from which they get the popular name of “Ted Eyes.’' 
The Latin name is Psaltoda moerens. We know very little of the 
length of time that our Australian Cicadas pass in the ground, 
but it is probably several years in some cases. In America there 
is a well-known species which takes seventeen years over this 
stage, the adults appearing in numbers only periodically. 
Dragon-flies 
JN the spring and early summer, many forms of these graceful 
denizens of the air may be seen hawking their orey in the 
open spaces and over the ponds and streams. The very delicate 
species of Zygopterids (Damsel-flies'), with their thin bodies 
coloured blue and white, sometimes with some red, are very 
numerous and many different varieties will be recognized by the 
nature lover. Several kinds of Aeschnidae, with their wings 
measuring four or five inches across, wend their way to and 
fro through the air at enormous speeds. Over the ponds and 
streams the more medium-sized but stouter-bodied Libellulids 
are numerous and of varied colour from yellow to almost 
entirely blue or red. In many of these there is a marked colour 
difference in the two sexes, as, for example, in the common 
Orthetrum caledonicum, in which the male has a blue body while 
the female is dingy yellow. Some of the smaller species, as 
Diplacodes, are brilliantly red. 
The larvae of dragon-flies are aquatic and may be found in 
the ponds and streams among the weeds and mud The careful 
observer may sometimes see the adults flying low over the water 
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