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Updated: June 22, 2025
As soon as the day got hot, and that awful buzzing began in the trees, the Big Digger got her sting ready, and went booming along in the direction of the sound. Now Mother Carey had given the Cicada bright eyes and strong wings, and it was his own business to take care of himself; but he was so pleased with his music that he never saw the fierce Digger Wasp, till she charged on him.
In the flushed splendor of the blossom-bursts of spring, in the coming and the going of the cicada, in the dying crimson of autumn foliage, in the ghostly beauty of snow, in the delusive motion of wave or cloud, they saw old parables of perpetual meaning. Even their calamities fire, flood, earthquake, pestilence interpreted to them unceasingly the doctrine of the eternal Vanishing.
The plunge of an oar, as some boat was rowed out among the anchored ships the ripple of the light breaker at intervals the hail of a sentinel, "Who goes there?" the low parley that followed the chirp of the cicada in the dark jungle or the scream of the sea-bird, scared by some submarine enemy from its watery rest were the only sounds that disturbed the deep stillness of the night.
I beckoned Carlotta, who glided down, and there, with our heads together and holding our breath, we watched the queerest little love drama imaginable. Our cicada stood alert and spruce, waving his antenna with a sort of cavalier swagger, and every now and then making his corslet vibrate passionately.
Winston, who relates this, stands as high for intelligence and veracity as any one in this vicinity. I thought, on first hearing the story, that probably the sting was by some other insect, but Mr. Winston says that he saw the Cicada. But perhaps this proves that the sting is not fatal; that depends on the subject.
Three species have been captured, all characterised by the same singular feature of having the wings fan-like, separated nearly their entire length into detached sections, resembling feathers in the pinions of a bird expanded for flight. HOMOPTERA. Cicada.
The murderess in her suit of apple-green has pounced on some sleeping Cicada. My boarders' menu is settled: I will feed them on Cicadae. They take such a liking to this fare that, in two or three weeks, the floor of the cage is a knacker's yard strewn with heads and empty thoraces, with torn-off wings and disjointed legs. The belly alone disappears almost entirely.
Then she offered it to her young a third time, but with the same result as before, except that this time the bird dropped it; but she was at the ground as soon as the cicada was, and taking it in her beak flew some distance to a high board fence where she sat motionless for some moments.
The frogs, too, by the river in iterative fugue sent forth a song as suggestive of the margins as the scent of the fern, and the mint, and the fragrant weeds. A convulsive start! She did not know that she slept until she was again awake. The moon had travelled many a mile along the highways of the skies. It hung over the purple mountains, over the farthest valley. The cicada had grown dumb.
Cicada Now surely he of divers moods, which he exhibits in various ways, may cover himself with the branches of different plants, and may hold discourse worthily with the Muses; for they are his aura or comforter, his anchor or support, and his harbor, to which he retires in times of labor, of agitation, and of storm.
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