O deplorable mother, have centuries of experience taught you nothing? Surely, with those excellent eyes of yours, you cannot fail to see the terrible sappers, when they flutter around you, preparing their felon stroke! You see them, you know that they are at your heels; and you remain impassive and let yourself be victimized. Turn round, you easy-going colossus, and crush the pigmies! But you will do nothing of the sort: you are incapable of altering your instincts, even to lighten your share of maternal sorrow. The Common Cicada’s eggs are of a gleaming ivory-white. Elongated in shape and conical at both ends, they might be compared with miniature weavers’-shuttles. They are two millimetres and a half long by half a millimetre wide. [25] They are arranged in a row, slightly overlapping. The Ash Cicada’s, which are a trifle smaller, are packed in regular parcels mimicking microscopic bundles of cigars. We will devote our attention exclusively to the first; their story will tell us that of the others. September is not over before the gleaming ivory-white gives place to straw-colour. In the early days of October there appear, in the front part, two little dark-brown spots, round and clearly-defined, which are the ocular specks of the tiny creature in course of formation. These two shining eyes, which almost look at you, combined with the cone-shaped fore-end, give the eggs an appearance of finless fishes, the very tiniest of fishes, for which a walnut-shell would make a suitable bowl. About the same period, I often see on my asphodels and those on the hills around indications of a recent hatching. These indications take the form of certain discarded clothes, certain rags left on the threshold by the new-born grubs moving their quarters and eager to reach a new lodging. We shall learn in an instant what these cast skins mean. Nevertheless, in spite of my visits, which were assiduous enough to deserve a better result, I have never succeeded in seeing the young Cicadæ come out of their cells. My home breeding prospers no better. For two years running, at the right time, I collect in boxes, tubes and jars a hundred twigs of all sorts colonized with Cicada-eggs; not one of them shows me what I am so anxious to see, the emergence of the budding Cicadæ. Réaumur experienced the same disappointment. He tells us how all the eggs sent by his friends proved failures, even when he carried them in a glass tube in his fob to give them a mild temperature. O my revered master, neither the warm shelter of our studies nor the niggardly heating-apparatus of our breeches is enough in this case! What is needed is that supreme stimulant, the kisses of the sun; what is needed, after the morning coolness, which already is sharp enough to make us shiver, is the sudden glow of a glorious autumn day, summer’s last farewell.