, 1889-07-23
FOR SEVENTEEN YEARS.
LocUsTs eURRoW THAT LONG, BUT
HAVE ONE LONG GAY SEASON.

Facts About the brilliant csSeer of This
UnmItiEated Nuisance-The Females
Widowed Early. Don't Pine Away,
but Get Right Down to Business
The seventeen year locusts pass seven
teen years under ground, and then, as IL
by preconcerted arrangement, make
their appearance out of little holes al
most simultaneously, and in numbers
that run far up into the millions. This
Is always done after sunset, and by o
o'clock the same night the hordes have
appeared. They are not very active
when they first appear out of their sub
terranean homes, but they make what
speed they a toward the nearest trees,
n climb them to the lower leaves,
where they fairly swarm, sometimes as
many as thirteen pup@ clinging to one
a leaf. Those which are belated either
cling to the bark of the tree or-if too
late to get that far-fasten their claws to
the first convenient object, and wait for
the grand Transformation which is to
convert them from ugly crawling things
of silence and gloom into gorgeous things
of the air and the sunlight, the males
endowed with musical powers, and both
sexes clad in gay suits of orange and
black, with gossamer wings of iridescent
hues. But a few minutes elapse after
the pup@ have secured a resting place
before the dull skins begin to crack along
the back.
JOINING WITH DRUMS.
Then the imprisoned cicada works his
UNIV m fraa1ann OF tho Grst n eNft ,rhfta
thing, but quickly developing wings and
becoming hard and active. For the most
part it does not require more thar twen-
ty minutes for the soft prisoner to be-
come a perfect cicada, though sometimes
an hour or more is consumed in the pro-
cess, and several OUR are required to
produce lief final color. The males are
the first by several days to appear, and
they herald the first dawn of their new
existence by trying their drums; for
their musical apparatus is in effect drum
like. AT first their music is rather feeble,
but in a little while it secures the proper
tone and force, and then it scarcely
knows any rest. Nor do they drum at
h~aphazard, but rather in unison, and SO
it is that the noise of the swarms can be
heard fully a mile away, and is positive
ly deafening when close at hand.
The male cicada eats very little while
waiting for the female to appear, and
that little is in the form of sap from the
trees, the bark of which is slightly
%punctured for the juice to exude. The
coming of the females is hailed by the
waiting lords with an increased noise,
and for a few days the air is thick with
the flying insects, SO much SO that the
sun is obscured for small areas. In a few
days after this the males die gradually,
n the females busy themselves with
the task of egg laying. Each female
will lay in The neighborhood of 500 eggs,
and the manner in which she lays them
is really remarkable. She selects young
twigs only, and, with a singular appa-
ratus, called IN ovipositor, bores holes in
regular order along the under side of the
twigs, into which the eggs are regularly
and carefully placed. Each nest con-
tains about twenty eggs. The ovipositor
is a most ingenious c~ontrivance, and is
composed of three parts, one part being
an awl with which to pierce, and two
parts being opposing saws with which to
cut. And after the nest has been cut
out of the twig the ovipositor acts as a
tube, dow which the egg Is propelled
into its place in the nest.
TWENTY FEET UNDER GROUND.
After the cicada has laid all her G
she loses her strength and dies. She has
lived q dreary underground existence of
seventeen years, to enjoy a brief life of
a few weeks in the air and sunshine.
And o the new brood is started on a
seventeen years of life. The eggs hatch
in about six weeks, and the baby cicada
is about one-sixteenth of an inch long and
very active, though SO light that it falls
to the ground from a height sometimes
of 100 feet without the least injury. 1t
has a pair of strong claws with which to
dig a hole in the ground, and it puts
them n use Immediately. Down it
goes into the earth, and for seventeen
years burrows and burrows, sometimes .
going as deep as twenty feet, and some
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