Of this familiar and beloved insect Aristotle gives a copious account. He describes two separate species, which we still recognize easily; a larger one and the better singer, the other smaller and the first to come and last to go with the summer season. He recognized the curious vocal organ, or vibratory drum, at the cicada's waist, and saw that some cicadas possessed it and others not; and he knew, as the poets also knew, that it was the males who sang, while their wives listened and were silent. He tells how the cicada is absent from treeless countries, as, for instance, from Cyrene (and why, I wonder, does he go all the way to Cyrene for his illustration?), neither is it heard in deep and sunless woods; but in the olive-groves you hear it at its best, for an olive-grove is sparse and the sun comes through. Then he tells us briefly, but with remarkable accuracy, the story of the creature's life: how the female, with her long ovipositor, lays her eggs deep down in dead, hollow twigs, such as the canes on which the vines are propped; how the brood, when they escape from the egg, burrow underground; how later on they emerge, especially in rainy weather, when the rains have softened the soil; how then the larva changes into another form, the so-called 'nymph'; and how at last, when summer comes, the skin of the nymph breaks and the perfect insect issues forth, changes colour, and begins to sing. In Aristophanes, in Theocritus, in Lucretius, Virgil, Martial, and in the Anthology, we may gather up a host of poetical allusions to the natural history thus simply epitomized.