Page:Insects - Their Ways and Means of Living.djvu/220

 ==CHAPTER VII: THE PERIODICAL CICADA==

]T iS to be observed, in most of our human affairs, that we give greatest acclaim to the spectacular, and, further- more, that when once a hero bas delivered the great thrill, all his acts of everyday lire acquire headline values. Thus a biographer may run on at great length about the petty details in the lire of some great person, knowing well that the public, under the spell of hero worship, will read with avidity of things that would make but the dullest plati- tudes if told of any undistinguished mortal. Therefore, in the following history of out (amous insect, universally known as the "seventeen-year locust," the writer does not hesitate to insert matter that would be dry and tedious if given in connection with a commonplace creature. lMost unfortunate it is, now, that we are compe]led to divest our hero of his long-worn epithet of "seventeen-year locust," and to present him in the disguise of his true patronymic, which is cicada (pronounced sî-ka'-da). In a scientific book, however, we must have full respect for the proprieties of nomenclature; and since, as already explained in Chapter I, the name "locust" belongs to the grasshopper, we can not continue to designate a cicada by this terre, for so doing would but propagate confusion. Moreover, even the praenomen of "seventeen-year" is misleading, for some of the members of the species have thirteen-year lires. Entomologists, therefore, have re- christened the "seventeen-year locust" the periodical cicada. The cicada family, the Cicadidae, includes many species.

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