But the laying takes a long time when it is all performed on the same support. Allowing ten minutes to a cell, the series of forty which I have sometimes seen represents a period of six to seven hours. The sun therefore can alter its position considerably before the Cicada has finished her work. In that case the rectilinear direction becomes bent into a spiral curve. The mother turns around her stalk as the sun itself turns; and [[92]]her row of pricks suggests the course of the gnomon’s shadow on a cylindrical sundial.
Very often, while the Cicada is absorbed in her work of motherhood, an infinitesimal Gnat, herself the bearer of a boring-tool, labours to exterminate the eggs as fast as they are placed. Réaumur knew her. In nearly every bit of stick that he examined he found her grub, which caused him to make a mistake at the beginning of his researches. But he did not see, he could not see the impudent ravager at work. It is a Chalcidid some four to five millimetres[7] in length, all black, with knotty antennæ, thickening a little towards their tips. The unsheathed boring-tool is planted in the under part of the abdomen, near the middle, and sticks out at right angles to the body, as in the case of the Leucospes,[8] the scourge of certain members of the Bee-tribe. Having neglected to capture the insect, I do not know what name the nomenclators have bestowed upon it, if indeed the dwarf that exterminates Cicadæ has been catalogued at all.
What I do know something about is its [[93]]calm temerity, its brazen audacity in the immediate presence of the colossus who could crush it by simply stepping on it. I have seen as many as three exploiting the unhappy mother at the same time. They keep close behind each other, either working their probes or awaiting the propitious moment.
The Cicada has just stocked a cell and is climbing a little higher to bore the next. One of the brigands runs to the abandoned spot; and here, almost under the claws of the giantess, without the least fear, as though she were at home and accomplishing a meritorious act, she unsheathes her probe and inserts it into the column of eggs, not through the hole already made, which bristles with broken fibres, but through some lateral crevice. The tool works slowly, because of the resistance of the wood, which is almost intact. The Cicada has time to stock the next floor above.
As soon as she has finished, a Gnat standing immediately behind her, waiting to perform her task, takes her place and comes and introduces her own exterminating germ. By the time that the mother has exhausted her ovaries and flies away, most of her cells have, in this fashion, received the alien egg which [[94]]will be the ruin of their contents. A small, quick-hatching grub, one only to each chamber, generously fed on a round dozen raw eggs, will take the place of the Cicada’s family.
O deplorable mother, have centuries of experience taught you nothing? Surely, with those excellent eyes of yours, you cannot fail to see the terrible sappers, when they flutter around you, preparing their felon stroke! You see them, you know that they are at your heels; and you remain impassive and let yourself be victimized. Turn round, you easy-going colossus, and crush the pigmies! But you will do nothing of the sort: you are incapable of altering your instincts, even to lighten your share of maternal sorrow.
The Common Cicada’s eggs are of a gleaming ivory-white. Elongated in shape and conical at both ends, they might be compared with miniature weavers’-shuttles. They are two millimetres and a half long by half a millimetre wide.[9] They are arranged in a row, slightly overlapping. The Ash Cicada’s, which are a trifle smaller, are packed in regular parcels mimicking microscopic bundles of cigars. We will devote [[95]]our attention exclusively to the first; their story will tell us that of the others.
September is not over before the gleaming ivory-white gives place to straw-colour. In the early days of October there appear, in the front part, two little dark-brown spots, round and clearly-defined, which are the ocular specks of the tiny creature in course of formation. These two shining eyes, which almost look at you, combined with the cone-shaped fore-end, give the eggs an appearance of finless fishes, the very tiniest of fishes, for which a walnut-shell would make a suitable bowl.
About the same period, I often see on my asphodels and those on the hills around indications of a recent hatching. These indications take the form of certain discarded clothes, certain rags left on the threshold by the new-born grubs moving their quarters and eager to reach a new lodging. We shall learn in an instant what these cast skins mean.
Nevertheless, in spite of my visits, which were assiduous enough to deserve a better result, I have never succeeded in seeing the young Cicadæ come out of their cells. My home breeding prospers no better. For two [[96]]years running, at the right time, I collect in boxes, tubes and jars a hundred twigs of all sorts colonized with Cicada-eggs; not one of them shows me what I am so anxious to see, the emergence of the budding Cicadæ.