The underground life of the early Cicada remains a secret. That of the well-developed larva is no better-known. When digging in the fields, if you turn up the soil to any depth, you are constantly finding the fierce [[111]]little burrower under your spade; but to find it fastened to the roots from whose sap it undoubtedly derives its nourishment is quite another matter. The upheaval occasioned by the spade warns it of its danger. It releases its sucker and retreats to some gallery; and, when discovered, it is no longer drinking.
If agricultural digging, with its inevitable disturbances, is unable to tell us anything of the grub’s underground habits, it does at least inform us how long the larval stage lasts. Some obliging husbandmen, breaking up their land, in March, rather deeper than usual, were so very good as to pick up for me all the larvæ, big and small, unearthed by their labour. The harvest amounted to several hundreds. Marked differences in bulk divided the total into three classes: the large ones, with rudiments of wings similar to those possessed by the larvæ leaving the ground, the medium-sized and the small. Each of these classes must correspond with a different age. We will add to them the larvæ of the last hatching, microscopic creatures that necessarily escaped the eyes of my rustic collaborators; and we arrive at four years as the probable duration of the underground life of the Cicadæ. [[112]]
Their existence in the air is more easily calculated. I hear the first Cicadæ at the approach of the summer solstice. The orchestra attains its full strength a month later. A few laggards, very few and very far between, continue to execute their faint solos until the middle of September. That is the end of the concert. As they do not all come out of the ground at the same period, it is obvious that the singers of September are not contemporary with those of June. If we strike an average between these two extreme dates, we shall have about five weeks.
Four years of hard work underground and a month of revelry in the sun: this then represents the Cicada’s life. Let us no longer blame the adult for his delirious triumph. For four years, in the darkness, he has worn a dirty parchment smock; for four years he has dug the earth with his mattocks; and behold the mud-stained navvy suddenly attired in exquisite raiment, possessed of wings that rival the bird’s, drunk with the heat and inundated with light, the supreme joy of this world! What cymbals could ever be loud enough to celebrate such felicity, so richly earned and so ephemeral! [[113]]
[1] I have gathered the Cicada’s eggs on Spartium junceum, or Spanish broom; on asphodel (Asphodelus cerasiferus); on Toad-flax (Linaria striata); on Calamintha nepeta, or lesser calamint; on Hirschfeldia adpressa; on Chondrilla juncea, or common gum-succory; on garlic (Allium polyanthum); on Asteriscus spinosus and other plants.—Author’s Note. [↑]
[2] Calamintha nepeta, Hirschfeldia adpressa.—Author’s Note. [↑]
[3] 10.9 inches.—Translator’s Note. [↑]