The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects

• "Memoires," tome V. 4to.

" The bottom of each cell offers to children who catch the Cicada a spectacle which amuses them, and which may be admired by men who know how to make the best use of their reason. The children think they see a little mirror of the thinnest and most transparent glass, or that a little blade of the most beautiful talc is set in the bottom of each of these little cells. That which one might see if this were the case would in no way differ from what one actually sees; the membrane which is stretched out at the bottom of the cells does not yield in transparency either to glass or to talc; and if one looks at it obliquely, one sees in it all the beautiful colours of the rainbow. It seems as if the Cicada has two glazed windows through-which one can see into the interior of its body."

The horny triangle of which we spoke above only separates in two the lower part of the cavity. The upper part is filled by a white, thin, but strong membrane. This membrane is only drawii tight when the body of the Cicada is raised. But with all this, where is the organ of song? What parts produce the sound? Reaumur will enlighten us on this point.

He opened the back of a Cicada, and laid bare the portion of the interior which corresponds with the cavity where the mirrors are, and was immediately struck with the size of the two muscles which meet and are attached to the back of the horny triangle, and to that one of its angles from which start the sides which form the cavities in which are both the mirrors.

"Muscles of such strength, placed in the belly of the Cicada, and in that part of the belly in which they are found, seem to be only so placed in order that they may move quickly backwards and forwards those parts which, being set in motion, produce the noise or song. And indeed, whilst I was examining one of these muscles, in moving it about gently with a pin, slightly displacing it, and then letting it return to its proper place, it so happened that I made a Cicada that had been dead for many months sing. The song, as might be expected, was not loud; but it was strong enough to lead me on to the discovery of the part to which it was due. I had only to follow the muscle I had been moving, to search for the part on which it abutted." In the large cavity, in which are the mirrors and the other parts mentioned above, there are besides two equal and similar compartments, tw^o cells, in which are placed the instrument of sound. This is a membrane in the shape of a kettledrum, not smooth, but, on the contrary, crumpled and full of wrinkles (Fig. 79). When it is touched it is more sonorous than the driest parchment. If the furrows on its

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fconvex surface are rubbed with a small body, such as a piece of rolled-up paper, incapable of piercing or tearing it, it is easily made to sound; and the sound is occasioned by the portions of the kettledrum which are depressed by the friction of the small body, returning to their former position as soon as it has ceased to act upon them. It is here that the two strong muscles act whose existence and use were discovered by Reaumur.

"It is clear," says this naturalist, "that when the muscle is alternately contracted and expanded with rapidity, one convex portion of the kettledrum will be rendered concave, and will then resume its convex form by the force of its own spring. Then this noise will be made, this song of which we have been so long seeking an explanation, because we wished to find out all the parts by means of which He, who never makes anything without its use, willed that it should be produced." Musical iJpaJatus of the Let us add, to complete what we have already Male cicada. said on this subject, that if the kettledrums are the essential organs of the insect's song, the mirrors, the white and wrinkled membranes, and the exterior shutters which cover in the

whole apparatus, contribute largely, as Re'aumur pointed out, to modify and strengthen the sound.

We have said above that the female Cicada does not sing; and so her singing organs are quite rudimentary. This fact, moreover, has been known for ages. Xenarchus, a poet of Rhodes, says, with little gallantry:—

** Happy Cicadas! thy females are deprived of voice!"

Nature has indemnified the female Cicada for this privation, by giving her an instrument less noisy indeed, but more useful. This is a sort of auger, destined to penetrate the bark of the branches of trees, and lodged in the last segment of the abdomen, which, for this purpose, is hollowed out groove-wise. By the aid of a system of muscles the auger can be protruded or retracted at pleasure. It is furnished with three implements. In the middle there is a piercer, or bodkin, which when run into a branch supports the insect, and two stylets^ whose upper edges, having teeth like a saw, resting back to back, on the middle implement, move up and down it. With this admirable instrument the female Cicada incises obliquely the bark and wood until she has almost reached ' the pith (Fig. 80). The

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male sings while she is at work. When the cell is sufficiently deep and properly prepared, the female lays at the bottom of it from five to eight eggs. From these eggs come very small white grubs (Fig. 8r), which leave their nest, descend by the trunk, and bury themselves in the ground, where they devour the roots of the tree. They then become pupz, and hollowing out the earth with their front legs, which are very much developed, continue to live at the expense of the roots. - At the end of spring these pupe (Fig. 82) come out of the earth, hook themselves on to the trunks of trees, and strip themselves one | fine evening of their skin,” which remains whole and dried. Very weak at first, these meta-morphosed insects drag them: | selves along with difficulty. But next day, warmed by the first rays of the sun, having had, no doubt, time to reflect on their new social position,

Fig. 80.—Female Cicada laying her eggs in the end tes aes ee groove she has bored in the branch ofa tree. | Were on the preceding evening, they agitate their wings, they fly, and the males send forth into the air the first notes of their screeching concert. The Cicadas remain on trees, whose sap they suck by means of their sharp-pointed beak. It is difficult enough to catch them, for owing to their large, highly-developed wings, they fly rapidly away on the slightest noise. They inhabit the south of Europe, the whole of Africa from north to south, America in the same latitudes as Europe, the whole of the centre and south of Asia, New Holland, and the islands of Oceania. The Cicada, which in hot climates always exposes itself to the ardour of the most scorching sun,.is not found in temperate or cold regions.

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The consequence is that the southern nations know it very well, whilst in the north the large grasshopper, which is so common in those regions, and whose song closely resembles that of the Cicada, is commonly taken for it. There was to be seen at the Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1866 a picture by M. Aussandon, "La Cigale et la Fourmi," which showed, under an allegorical shape, the subject of La Fontaine's fable. The painter here represented the Cigale, or Cicada, under the form of a magnificent apple-green grasshopper. The artist

Fig. 81.— Larva of the Cicada. Fig. 82.— Pupa of the Cicada.

materialised here, as we may say, the common mistake of the inhabitants of the north, which makes them confound the Cicada with the great green grasshopper. For the rest, we may, by-the-by, say that La Fontaine's fable of " La Cigale et la Fourmi " is full of errors in natural history. Nothing is easier than to prove the truth of this assertion. From the very fii'st verges, the author shows that he has never observed the animal of which he speaks. * * La Cigale ayant chante Tout I'ete." No Cicada could sing " tout I'ete," since it lives at the utmost for a few weeks only. ** Se trouva fort depourvue Quand la bise fut venue."

' Quand la bise fut venue " means without doubt the month of November or December. But at this season of the year the Cicada has a long time since passed from life to death. When one wanders along the outskirts of woods as early as the month of October, in the south of France, one finds the soil covered with dead Cicadas. La

Fontaine's Cigale then could not have found itself " fort depourvue," for the simple reason that it was already dead. " Elle alia crier famine Chez la Fourmi, sa voisine, La priant de lui prefer

Quelque grain pour subsisted"

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The ant is carnivorous, and although it likes honey, it has nothing to do with grains of wheat, nor with any other grain, of which, according to the fabulist, it had laid up a stock. On the other hand, the Cicada, which he blames for having

** Pas un seul petit morceau De mouche ou de vermisseau," \

never dreamt of such victuals, for it lives entirely on the sap of large vegetables. The fables of the poet, who is called in France, one never knows why, " Le bon La Fontaine," teem with errors of the same kind as those we have just pointed out. The habits of animals are nearly always represented as exactly the contrary to what they really are. To initiate himself into the mysteries of the habits of animals. La Fontaine certainly had neither the works of Buffon nor the memoirs of Reaumur, which had not then been written; but had he not the book of Nature? But it is time to mention the principal species of the Cicada. We will describe two: that of the Ash, which lives on those trees in the south of France; and that of the Manna Ash, which is very common in the south-east of France. It is particularly plentiful in the forests of pines which abound between Bayonne and Bordeaux. It is on

these two species of Cicada that Re'aumur made the beautiful observations of which we gave a summary above.

The Cicada plebeia or Tdtigonia /raxi?ii, very common in Provence, is found, though rarely, in the forest of Fontainebleau, occasionally in La Brie. It is of a grey yellow below, black above; the head and thorax are marked or striped with black.

M. Solier, in a Memoir inserted in the " Annales de la Societe Entomologique de France," says that its song, very loud and very piercing,: seems to consist of one single note, repeated with rapidity, which insensibly grows weaker after a certain time, and terminates in a kind of whistle, which can be partly imitated by pronouncing the two con-. sonants j-/, and which resembles the noise of the air coming out of a little opening in a compressed bladder. When the Cicada sings, it moves its abdomen violently, in such a manner as alternately to move it away from, and to bring it near to, the little covers of the sonorous cavities; to this movement is added a slight trembling of the mesothorax. The same entomologist relates a very interesting observation made on this species of Cicada by his friend, M. Boyer, a chemist at Aix, and which he himself verified. The Cicadas, in general, are very timid, and fly away at the least noise. However, when a