That is what the seventeen-year cicada does. In the very first place, it is an egg which its mother deposits in a tiny hole in a twig. In a few weeks it makes its way out of the egg and drops to the ground, into which it burrows, and in which it remains for nearly seventeen years before it is prepared for life above ground. When, at last, it is ready for the bright sunlight, it may be one foot from the surface or it may be ten feet deep in the ground. In either case it begins to dig upward until it finds its way out, when it climbs up the nearest tree and fastens itself by its sharp claws to a leaf or twig. There it waits until its back splits open, and behold! it immediately crawls out of itself, so to speak. The new insect is a soft, dull fellow at first, but he grows as if he had been storing up energy for seventeen years for just that one purpose. Within an hour, two pairs of most beautiful wings have grown, and in a few hours more it has become hard and active. The female cicadas are quiet enough, but the males are as noisy as so many little boys with new drums. Indeed, they do have drums themselves. Just under their wings are drums made of shiny membrane as beautiful as white silk, and these are kept rattling almost all the time. One cicada can make noise enough; but imagine the din of millions of them all going at the same time. It sounds as if all the frogs in the country had come together to try to drown the noise of a saw-mill. Now it is the saw-mill you hear, and now the frogs. [Illustration] It sounds like a big story to say millions, but if you could go into the woods where they are, you might be willing to say billions. I have counted over a thousand cast-off shells on one small tree, and on one birch leaf I have seen twelve shells. And the earth in some places is like a sieve from the holes made by the cicadas as they came out. But within a few weeks from the insects' first appearance their eggs have been laid and the cicadas have all died. A great many of them are eaten by the birds and chickens, but most of them simply can not live any longer. Yours truly, JOHN R. CORVELL "THE GREAT LUBBER LOCUST." As it appears from Mr. Coryell's letter that the seventeen-year cicada is only an imitation locust, I shall give you a portrait of another member of the family who is, perhaps, more nearly related to the insect he is named after. At all events, he is certainly more like a grasshopper than is the seventeen-year cicada. The grasshopper that lives in this part of the world is a fine fellow to hop, as you know, but he always lights on his feet, and looks as composed and as much at his ease as if he had walked to the spot in the most dignified manner. [Illustration]