The Insect Folk

by Margaret Warner Morley

Our cicada has one organ that is very interesting; it is the little apparatus by which it sings.

Turn it over, Ned, and all of you look at the two thin plates lying against the abdomen just below the thorax.

Those membranes are like two little kettle drums, and they are its song organs.

There are other membranes beneath them, and large muscles within the body to move the membranes.

The membranes being set in rapid vibration we get the shrill cry of the locust.

Only the male has the kettle drums. In the female these organs are rudimentary, and she is dumb.

Kettle drum

Cicada, you are a pretty little thing with your clear, glasslike wings and your black body with red and green trimming. See its mouth lying in that little groove under its head. It is a tube, and sharp. The cicada sticks it into a leaf or young twig to suck out the juice.

Nell wants to know if the young cicadas are like the old ones. Indeed, they would be cunning little things if they were, and—yes, they would look very much like flies.