But the young cicadas are queer babies, indeed. They do not look very much like their parents, although they have a head, a thorax, and an abdomen.
The female cicada makes a slit in the bark of the tree twig with her ovipositor and lays the eggs there. As soon as they hatch out, the tiny cicadas drop down to the ground and burrow into the earth.
You would not know that they are cicadas, they are such queer-looking little things. But they have strong, sucking mouth parts with which they pierce holes in the roots of trees and suck out the juices.
Of course these larvæ grow and moult and continue to do so until they have moulted a good many times and grown quite large.
They stay down under the ground two years.
At the end of that time they crawl up to the surface of the earth in the early summer.
They climb trees, or weeds, or fence posts, and then the skin splits down the back for the last time, and out comes a full-grown cicada with bright glassy wings.
The wings of the larva do not grow at each moult like the wings of the grasshopper.
The larva never gets beyond short little wing pads. See John's eyes twinkling! I believe—yes, he has! He has brought us the cast-off skin of a cicada to look at.