A WASP BEARING OFF A CICADA.
After the wasp has killed the cicada, they both fall to the ground. Strong as the wasp is it is not easy for her to carry such a heavy insect to her nest. But she has her plan. Slowly but persistently she drags her victim to a tree-trunk and up it, though it may take her an hour to reach the requisite height. Then she sails off for her nest on an inclined plane, with wings extended, and her victim clasped in her arms.
The burrow of this wasp consists, we are told, “of a gently sloping entrance, extending for about six inches, when, ordinarily, a turn is made at right angles, and the excavation is continued for six or eight inches farther, ending in a globular cell an inch and a half in diameter. Frequently a number of branches leave the main burrow at about the same point, each terminating in a round cell.”[[32]] In each of these cells either one or two cicadas are deposited, and it would seem that when there are two, only one of these is provided with an egg, so that some of the wasp-larvæ have double rations. As the female speciosus (her arguments, I think, would need to be specious to make one in love with a scheme in which she plays such a part) is very much larger than the male, it seems more than probable that the female eggs are laid in the chambers which contain two cicadæ, and the male ones in those which accommodate a single one only. If so, then these solitary wasps must have the same control over the sex of the eggs laid by them as the queen bee has. The social ones, should this be the case, no doubt have, too, but as the former must have preceded the latter, it would appear that this power has not been developed to meet the needs of a complex state of society—as has been generally supposed—but in accordance with much more simple conditions. The fact, however, if it be one, has not yet been demonstrated.
“The delicate white, elongate egg of the wasp is laid under the middle leg of the cicada, and when it hatches, the larva protrudes its head and begins at once to draw nourishment from between the segments of its victim. The egg hatches in two or three days, and the larva attains full growth in a week, or a little more. It feeds entirely from the outside, and, when full-grown, spins a white silken cocoon (mixed with much earth, however), which is finished at the expiration of two days. It remains in the cocoon, unchanged, through the winter, transforming to pupa only in the following spring, and shortly before the appearance of the true insect. When the adult hatches it gnaws its way out of the cocoon, and so on up through the burrow to the surface of the ground, thus completing its life-round in a full year.”[[32]] How long, exactly, the life of the cicada lasts after it has entered into hospitable relations with the speciosus I am unable to say.
Such, then, is the end of the cicada, in spite of the love of Apollo, who, according to the Anacreontic ode, bestowed upon it its shrill song. Thus it dies, though “cherished by the Muses, painless and fleshless, almost equal to the gods.” Whether it be fleshless speciosus, in the larval state, best knows (on the latter point there will have been no means of comparison), that it is painless one can only hope. It is something, however, to be so known to fame. Homer himself alludes to the cicada in terms of respect, calling its shrill song “delicate music,” whilst Hesiod tells of “the dark-winged Tettix, when he begins to sing to men of the coming summer; he whose meat and drink is of the refreshing dew, and who all day long and at break of day pours forth his voice.”
There was no end, apparently, to the love of the ancients—especially the Greeks—for the cicadas, or tettiges—for they were known by both names—or to the graceful things they said of them. From poets and philosophers down to ploughmen, all were equally fond of them. “We bless thee, Tettix,” says a poet whose name has been merged in that of one who is now a name only, though a great one—Anacreon, namely—“We bless thee for that seated on the tree-tops, sipping the dew, thou singest royally.... Oh, sweetest of summer prophets! honoured by mortals, thou art cherished by the Muses. Phœbus himself loves thee, and gave thee thy shrill song”; and Plato tells us that “as music soothes the mind and dissipates fatigue, so the ploughman loves and cherishes the cicada for its song.” The Greek ploughman, apparently, was a less gross embodiment than the one of the present day, after twenty-five centuries or so of improvement. To Apollo the cicadas were sacred, because they “everlastingly sang to the sun,”[[33]] and, for the Muses, they had once supplied their place. “As the story goes,” says Plato, “before the Muses lived the cicadas were men on earth, and so loved song and singing that, to lose no time from it, they left off eating, and so died of that dear delight. But, in death, they became cicadas, and this boon was granted them by the Muses, lately born, that on earth they should eat no more, but only sing until they died again, and that then they should return to the Muses to tell them who, amongst mortals, loved and worshipped them most.” “A lover of music like yourself,” says Socrates in the “Phædrus” of Plato, addressing one of his worshippers, “ought surely to have heard this story of the cicadas, how they were once human beings, but died through forgetting to eat. But now, dear to the Muses, they hunger no more, thirst no more, but sing only, from their birth. And in heaven they tell Terpsichore of the dancers, Erato of the lovers, Calliope, eldest of the nine, and Urania, of those whose heart is in philosophy—and thus they whisper to them all.”
So established were these and similar stories that, in Greece, a cicada perched on a harp was often engraved upon gems as the symbol of the Muses, and, were there a musical contest, one had only to settle on the lyre or pipe of the competitor it favoured, for the prize to be instantly adjudged to that one—since Apollo was then held to have spoken. Only in the absence of such indication were other methods of forming a conclusion resorted to. In common with other graceful creatures, cicadas were often kept as pets by the Greeks, and that mausoleums were sometimes raised to these favourites we know from the following epigram of the poetess Anytie—written probably for the friend it celebrates:—“For a grasshopper, a nightingale of the fields, and for an oak-haunting cicada Myro has built one common tomb. There the maiden sits and weeps for three pets, torn from her by unrelenting Hades.”
Amongst the Athenians the cicadas were looked upon as children of the soil of Attica, and those only who, like them, had been born upon it, were permitted to twist the golden tettix, or bodkin, amidst their flowing locks, thus forming the knot in which they were accustomed to wear them. This privileged bodkin received its name through being surmounted with the head, in gold, of a cicada, or tettix, and the wearers—or bearers—of these insignia—which were strictly forbidden to strangers—were known for this reason as Tettigophori. They were most proud of the distinction, and, indeed, as it showed them to be Athenians, they had a somewhat better right to be than is common in such cases. Yet, amidst all this praise, we meet, here and there, with a dissentient note. Hercules, for instance, feeling inclined to sleep, once, on the banks of the river, opposite where the town of Locris stood, and not being able to, on account of the perpetual singing of the cicadas, took it so seriously that he prayed to the gods to put a stop to their disturbing him. The gods, with whom Hercules was always a favourite, heard his prayer, and cicadas, from that time, ceased to sing opposite Locris, though they swarmed all round about that town. Here it seems just to be hinted that Hercules was not very fond of the cicadas’ song, and Virgil—but he was a Roman—has called it (infandum!) a creaking note. On the whole, however, when he mentions these insects, he gives us a pleasing picture.