Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/55

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1. Cicada

2. Grasshopper and young

3. The lubber-locust of the West

4. Locust, and pupa above

on which they travelled. They moved forward and upward without manifest directing purpose, but with a general tendency to get as far up as possible. They paused at various distances from the ground, and attached themselves to sundry parts of trees and other objects. More than a dozen pupa-cases were seen clinging to the leaves of a small twig eight inches long. Apparently, where the uncontrollable sense of their coming transformation arrested them there they halted, obedient to that overforce that brooks no denial from any creature.

On the evening of June 4, great numbers were ascending tree trunks in a neighbor's spacious grounds. They had directed their course toward the trees from all parts of the lot, but an adjacent fence received a portion of the host. They issued in such numbers that trunks, branches, and leaves of trees were covered with them in motion or at rest. The ground beneath was riddled with holes, and in a few days the fallen shells lay so thickly at the roots of trees that they hid the surface, and quantities adhered to bark and foliage. The movements of this host, creeping out of their open burrows and huts, crawling along the grassy surface, climbing up trees, and breaking forth from their shells, as seen in the light of a full moon, formed a weird and interesting spectacle.

Some idea of the vast issuing swarms may be had from the number of exit holes within certain surfaces. In a space six feet square, lying between two trees, there were 665 openings. Within a circle described by a radius of ten feet from the trunk of a large maple-tree a careful count and estimate showed 9600 openings. The most extraordinary perforation was underneath a beech which had a spread of thirty feet in diameter. Within this circle the earth was pierced with the enormous number of 31,500 burrow holes. In one square foot of surface there were forty-one openings, and in another space they averaged sixty-eight to the square foot.

Almost invariably the burrows were more thickly placed around the bases of trees than elsewhere. This naturally followed, since the roots marked the sphere of subsistence during their subterranean life. With insects as with men, one cannot escape from his past, even when he seems to emerge therefrom.

Most of the pupæ after ascension passed directly to the tree or bush whereon transformation occurred. But there were exceptions. In many places were little elevations, somewhat resembling the heaps that earthworms make, but higher. These were the much-talked-of cicada huts, turrets, or towers. They were about the length and twice the thickness of a man's thumb; were built immediately above the open burrow, and were hollow inside. In fact, a turret is simply a continuation of a burrow above the ground. The builder literally carries up its hole