34 
HALF HOURS WITH INSECTS. 
[Packard. 
have seen that the May beetle is about three years in attain¬ 
ing the beetle state, and the wire worm and boring beetles, 
such as the apple borer, may be three or four years in the 
larval condition, but no other insects are as yet known, with 
this sole remarkable exception, to be so long lived in their 
immature state. 
The eggs of the Seventeen Year Cicada to the number of 
five hundred are laid in June, and about the middle of July, 
in the Middle States, the grubs (Fig. 23, greatly enlarged) 
are hatched. They escape into the ground from the twigs 
on the trees, and make their way to the smaller roots of the 
tree, burrowing a foot or two below the surface. When 
about to change to the winged state, they ascend to the 
surface, making cylindrical 
burrows “firmly cemented 
and varnished so as to be 
water proof.” 
Fig. 23. 
It should be here men¬ 
tioned that certain broods 
Larva of Seventeen Year Cicada. of this s P ecies a PP ear once 
in thirteen years, and this 
indicates that the ancestors of the present species went 
through their round of existence in two years, as in the 
other species. How the wonderful divergence in habits was 
brought about would form an exceedingly interesting subject 
of inquiry. 
We are indebted to Dr. W. I. Burnett for an interesting 
suggestion concerning the chances of life in this insect, and 
this may give us some hints regarding the enormous waste, 
so to speak, of life (though after all it is an example of the 
economy of nature) involved in the struggle for existence 
among animals. Says our author, in a paper read at a meet¬ 
ing of the American Association for the Advancement of 
Science (Albany, 1851), “The female has about five hundred 
eggs, which, from certain relations of the other sex, which I 
2 
