Jht RURAL. NEW-YORKER 
1079 
The Curious History of the Cicada-killer 
r enclose a strange bee-like creature. 
They are quite numerous near my place, 
and people are afraid of being stung by 
them, although no one has been banned 
yet. What is this, and is there danger 
of its stinging humans? a. k. 
Westchester Co., N. Y. 
The world of living things is vibrant 
with strife and struggle, in which the 
best equipped) tlie more cunning, the 
stronger and the fiercer, overcome and de¬ 
vour the weaker without mercy and with¬ 
out compunction. To us humans these 
happenings seem like tragedies—pitiless, 
savage, ferocious and cruel; and the cica¬ 
da-killer, which is really one of the dig¬ 
ger wasps, appears to have attained the 
summit of delicate, refined cruelty. The 
digger-wasps catch their prey, which con¬ 
sists of other insects, sting each one in 
ft highly skillful manuer, touching only 
certain vital nerve centers in a way to 
paralyze the victim's power of motion so 
that it. cannot struggle or move. More¬ 
over, the paralyzed insect, does not die 
and decay, but. exists for days in a fresh 
Condition for the wasp grubs to feed 
upon, and grow to maturity. Whether 
the mother wasp simply paralyses the 
nerves of motion in the victim, leaving 
the other life processes to go on in a 
subdued way. or whether when she stings 
her prey, she injects, at the same time, an 
embalming fluid, we cannot say. The 
performance, in either case, looks to us 
like cruelty refined to the highest degree, 
and yet it is likely that the sense of feel¬ 
ing is lost to the insect stung and that, 
after all. it suffers little following the 
initial sword-thrust of the wasp. Let us 
consider briefly the habits of this insect 
tigress, the cicada-killer, and see where 
she digs and how she hunts ami rears 
her family. 
She is the largest wasp in the Eastern 
Middle States, and withal is a handsome 
one. She has a graceful body, lVi in. in 
length, with long powerful amber-colored 
wings for swift, strong flight. The 
thorax is velvety brown, while the abdo¬ 
men is black, with six pale, creamy-white, 
notched spots, as shown in the drawing, 
and a shining black, curved, formidable 
sting on the end of the abdomen fully a 
quarter of an inch long. Her graceful, 
powerful wings and her enormous sting, 
together with her large, strong, horny 
jaws or mandibles, fit her most admirably 
for the life she leads. 
During the long hot days of July, when 
the dog-day harvest-fly or one-year cicada 
is shrilling its piercing song from the 
depths of the elms and maples the cicada- 
killer fares forth on her quest for prey. 
Suddenly the song of the cicada changes 
to a terror-stricken, discordant cry, and 
we know the dagger of the tigress has 
struck home. In the struggle that fol¬ 
lows the wasp and the cicada nmy both 
tumble from the tree to the ground. If 
so, the wasp at once begins her laborious 
task of dragging the cicada hack up the 
trunk of the tree and out onto a limb 
from which she can gtide. as it were, in 
a long Blasting line of flight to her bur¬ 
row which she has already dug in some 
dry hank or terrace.- The burrow is 
simply a tunnel in the soil with a sloping 
entrance about (> in. in length and then 
a suddeu right-angled turn, after which 
the tunnel continues from 6 to 8 in. 
further, when it ends in a dome-like 
chamber about 1 V& in. in diameter. It 
is in this chamber that the wasp finally 
places the paralyzed cicada, and then on 
the under side of the thorax of the sleep¬ 
ing victim she deposits a long, slender 
white egg. In two or three days the egg 
hatches and the young wasp-grub finds 
an abundance of fresh, delectable food 
just at hand, or rather, at mouth. The 
grub completes its growth in a week or a 
little more, having consumed the juices 
and contents of the cicada’s body, and 
then spins a silken cocoon mixed with 
particles of soil, rests quietly until the 
following Spring, when it passes through 
further changes and becomes an adult 
wasp, '[’he wasp then burrows up through 
the soil with her strong mandibles and 
begins her task of rearing her kind in 
the same fierce, savage, laborious manner 
that her ancestors have practiced for in¬ 
numerable ages before her. Tier sole aim 
in life fs to maintain her kind on the 
face of the earth, and she stuns at noth¬ 
ing in her efforts to accomplish this end. 
Will this wasp sting human beings? 
Yes, certainly, and with telling effect, 
from a most powerful sting, if the latter 
trespass on her domain and wantonly in¬ 
terfere with her sole and serious business 
of rearing a family. A solitary digger- 
wasp seldom does sting humans, how¬ 
ever. because it is rare that one gets 
in the way of or interferes with these 
wasps. They are rarely met with, since 
their burrows are usually in out of-thc- 
wny places, although our correspondent 
writes that she found the cicada-killer 
digging her burrow In a gravelly path, a 
rash thing for a digger-wasp to do. 
Moreover, the burrows of these wasps 
are used only as homes for the helpless, 
inactive grubs, and not ns homes for the 
adults, as do the social hornets and yel¬ 
low jackets. It would be the better part 
of wisdom and valor if one did meet the 
cicada-killer to allow her to go on her 
way without interference. She is so 
completely absorbed in her job that she 
is tolerant of humans that happen to 
stumble in her way and she good-na¬ 
turedly overlooks mistakes of this kind. 
GLENN W. HKKKU’K. 
A Hen Man’s Struggle 
Eighteen years ago, because of my 
wife's ill health, I was obliged to sell my 
business in the city and move to the 
country, I built a plant with a capacity 
for uOO Leghorns or 400,heavier layers, 
per 100 may be considered such. No $300, but I knew this was not “as suC- 
feed was raised on the place, excepting ccssful as anyone.” There was too great 
beets and cabbage for green feed. All a loss in hatching und brooding, and too 
grain was bought, as was straw for low egg production. Also I had not 
scratching material. An account was established a retail egg trade for the 
ke pt w ith the business, charging it with whole output, but was obliged to sell 
some at wholesale. However, I hung on, 
C and soon had better hatches, better suc- 
p /r cess brooding, better egg production and 
_ __ a retail trade such that every egg was sold 
before I left home with them on market 
rQl days, during the flush season the sur- 
3 /^ bins going to customers for water-glass 
jk i V preserving. AH eggs were cleaned and 
— boxed and all white eggs tested for blood 
jv* jit spots, but I never charged fancy prices, 
I* not following the extremely high prices 
/ r k. during the Winter nor the extremely low 
IS \ prices during the Summer. 
m t. j The second year my net profits were 
y * about $450, the next $600, then $000, 
* and from that to a trifle more than 
Large Digger Wasp §1.300. usually between $1,000 and 
$1,100. Neither a fortune nor a failure, 
all feed and supplies purchased, interest but. a fair return for the labor, for while a 
on the investment, and a fair charge for flock of this size keeps one man busy dur- 
deterioration of the plant, but no charge iug the hatching and brooding period, a 
for my labor. It was given credit for husky man could care for double that 
everything it produced. number of layers from August 1 to March 
The first year the net profit was about 1. c. A. N. 
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