INSECTS
forward a few steps and begins work on another nest, which is completed in the same fashion. Some series consist of only three or four nests, while others contain as many as twenty and a few even more, but perhaps eight to twelve are the usual numbers. When the female has finished what she deems sufficient on one twig, she flies away and is said to make further layings elsewhere, till she has disposed of her 400 to 600 eggs, but the writer made no observations covering this point. Probably the cicada feels it safer not to intrust all her eggs to one tree, on the principle of not putting all your money in the same bank.
Death of the Adults
The din of music in the trees continues with monotonous regularity into the second week of June, by which time the mating season is over. Soon thereafter the performers lose their vitality; large numbers of them drop to the earth where many perish from an internal fungus disease that eats off the terminal rings of the body; others are mutilated and destroyed by birds, and the rest perhaps just die a natural death. Beneath the trees, where a great swarm has but recently given such abundant evidence of life, the ground is now strewn with the dead or dying. A large percentage of the living are in various stages of disfigurement—wings are torn off, abdomens are broken open or gone entirely, mere fragments crawl about, still alive if the head and thorax are intact. In the males often the great muscle columns of the drums are exposed and visibly quivering, and many of the insects, game to the end, even in their dilapidated condition still utter purring remnants of their song.
From now on till the latter part of July, the only evidence of the late swarm of noisy visitors will be the scarred twigs on the trees and bushes that have received the eggs and the red-brown patches of dying leaves that everywhere disfigure the oaks and hickories.
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