Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Periodical Cicada
Following brie?y the history of the insect, the young ant-like larva, hatching from the egg a few weeks after the latter has been laid, escapes from the wounded limb, falls lightly to the ground, and quickly burrows out of sight, forming for itself a little subterranean chamber or cell over some rootlet, where it remains through winter and summer, buried from light, air, and sun and protected in a manner from cold and frost. It lives in absolute solitude, separated from its fellows, in its moist earthen chamber, rarely changing its position save as some accident to the nourishing rootlet may necessitate its seeking another. In this manner it passes the seventeen or thirteen years Of its hypogeal existence in a dark cell in slow growth and preparation for a few weeks only Of the society of its fellows and, the enjoyment of the warmth and brightness of the sun and the fragrant air of early summer. During this brief period of aerial life it attends actively to the needs of continuing its species, is sluggish in move ment, rarely taking wing, and seldom takes food. For four or five weeks the male sings his song of love and courtship, and the female busies herself for a little longer period, perhaps, with the placing of the eggs which are to produce the subsequent generation thirteen or seventeen years later. At the close Of its short adult existence the Cicada falls to the ground again, perhaps within a few feet of the point from which it issued, to be there dismembered and scattered about, carpeting the surface of the ground with its wings and the fragments of its body. Such in brief is the life round of this anomalous insect.
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