It was in such circumstances as these, when a bright sun supplied a violent contrast to a cold night, that I used to find signs of hatching; but I always came too late: the young Cicadæ were gone. At most I sometimes happened to find one hanging by a thread from his native stalk and struggling in mid-air. I thought him caught in some shred of cobweb. At last, on the 27th of October, despairing of success, I gathered the asphodels in the enclosure and, taking the armful of dry stalks on which the Cicada had laid, carried it up to my study. Before abandoning all hope, I proposed once more to examine the cells and their contents. It was a cold morning. The first fire of the season had been lit. I put my little bundle on a chair in front the hearth, without any intention of trying the effect of the hot flames upon the nests. The sticks which I meant to split open one by one were within easier reach of my hand there. That was the only consideration which made me choose that particular spot. Well, while I was passing my magnifying-glass over a split stem, the hatching which I no longer hoped to see suddenly took place beside me. My bundle became alive; the young larvæ emerged from their cells by the dozen. Their number was so great that my professional instincts were amply satisfied. The eggs were exactly ripe; and the blaze on the hearth, bright and penetrating, produced the same effect as sunlight out of doors. I lost no time in profiting by this unexpected stroke of luck. At the aperture of the egg-chamber, among the torn fibres, a tiny cone-shaped body appears, with two large black eye-spots. To look at, it is absolutely the fore-part of the egg, which, as I have said, resembles the front of a very minute fish. One would think that the egg had changed its position, climbing from the bottom of the basin to the orifice of the little passage. But an egg to move! A germ to start walking! Such a thing was impossible, had never been known; I must be suffering from an illusion. I split open the stalk; and the mystery is revealed. The real eggs, though a little disarranged, have not changed their position. They are empty, reduced to transparent bags, torn considerably at their fore-ends. From them has issued the very singular organism whose salient characteristics I will now set forth.