Finally there comes a fateful evening when, as soon as the sun has set, he claws his way through the top of his mud turret or out of his burrow and looks about him for further means of gratifying his ambitions to climb. A bush, a tree, the highest thing within his range of vision, attracts his attention and he hurries toward it. It may be he finds himself in company with many of his kind hurrying toward the same goal, but they are of no interest to him as yet. Like the youth in the famous poem, "Excelsior" is his motto and he heeds no invitation to tarry. When he reaches the highest place within his ken he places himself, probably back downward, on some branch or twig, takes a firm hold with all his six pairs of claws, and keeps very still for a time. Then his skeleton nymph-skin breaks open at the back and there pushes out of it a strange creature long and white, except for two black spots upon its back; on he comes until only the tip of his body remains in the old nymph-skin; then he reaches forward and grasps the twig with his soft new legs and pulls himself entirely clear from the old hermit garb. At once his wings begin to grow; at first they are mere pads on his back, but they soon expand until they cover his body and are flat like those of a miller. The many veins in the wings are white and he keeps the wings fluttering in order that they may harden soon. If, in the moonlight of some June evening, a Junior Naturalist should see a tree covered with cicadas at this stage he would think it had suddenly blossomed into beautiful, white, fluttering flowers. [Illustration: _Fig. 339. The cicada is full grown at last, and his empty nymph skin is hanging to a branch._] [Illustration: _Fig. 340. The cicada's drum._]