We might as well call her knife an awl, or a gimlet, for it is like all three. It is used to cut, or bore, a hole in the tree. Into the hole she puts her eggs. This tool which Mrs. Cicada carries has three blades. The outer ones are rough on the edges. They can cut into very hard wood. Mrs. Cicada takes hold of the tree bark with her front feet. Then she cuts away with her knife, until she has made a neat little furrow. She chooses a dead branch for this. The sap in a live branch would harm her eggs. When the larvæ come out of the eggs, they at once leave the hole, and drop to the ground. There they dig a little house for a home. Their fore feet are well made for digging. Underground they feed on roots. They change from larvæ to pupæ. Next summer they come up, full-grown. Then Mr. Cicada begins his song. Mrs. Cicada at once goes to work to cut holes for her eggs. When, in mid-summer, the shrill song of the cicada is heard, people say: “Ah, now it will be hot and dry!” The poets have always loved the cicada, and made many pretty songs and stories about him. FOOTNOTES: [19] Animals and plants are divided into Classes, Orders, and Families, that we may arrange and study them more readily. A Class contains many objects with some great points of resemblance--as the Class of Insects. The Orders bring those together which have yet more points of resemblance--as the Order of the Same-Wings. Families contain those yet more closely related--as the Aphis Family, the Frog-hopper Family. The Classes, Orders, and Families have Latin or Greek names, of which in this book we give only the meaning. [20] Nature Reader, No. 2, “Lessons on Ants,” p. 29. LESSON XXII. REAL LIVE FAIRY. One September morning I took Hermie, and went over the hill, to the windmill. The hillside was covered with wild carrot, golden-rod, asters, white, purple, and pink. Near the windmill was a late wild-rose, in full bloom. Right in the golden centre of the rose, on the stamens and pistils, I saw what might be two fine jewels, and the coiled-up spring of a fairy watch. On the ground, among the rose-leaves, lay four lovely fans, in black and gold. They looked as if the fairy-queen and her court ladies might have dropped them, as they came home late from a ball. [Illustration: THE LIGHT BRIGADE.] I put all these things on a piece of white paper. Then I sat on a stone, took out my microscope, and said to Hermie, “Look here!” “O!” cried Hermie, “these are the head and wings of a poor butterfly! But where is his body gone?” “A bird has eaten it,” I said; “see, the bird’s bill has taken in the body and clipped off the wings, and just missed the head, which has dropped off. These are not the relics of a fairy ball, but of a cruel murder.” “I do not see,” said Hermie, “how a butterfly, which flits so fast, could be picked up so.”