s a little power in that organ until,
finally, there is no organ left.

John is puzzled to know just what is meant by an organ. It is some
particular part of the creature. An arm is an organ, a stomach is an
organ, an eye is an organ. The whole creature is made up of organs, and
is called an _organism_.

Your whole body, John, is an organism, but your legs and arms are
organs. Now, I think you understand.

Our cicada has one organ that is very interesting; it is the little
apparatus by which it sings.

Turn it over, Ned, and all of you look at the two thin plates lying
against the abdomen just below the thorax.

Those membranes are like two little kettle drums, and they are its song
organs.

There are other membranes beneath them, and large muscles within the
body to move the membranes.

The membranes being set in rapid vibration we get the shrill cry of the
locust.

Only the male has the kettle drums. In the female these organs are
rudimentary, and she is dumb.

[Illustration]

Cicada, you are a pretty little thing with your clear, glasslike wings
and your black body with red and green trimming. See its mouth lying in
that little groove under its head. It is a tube, and sharp. The cicada
sticks it into a leaf or young twig to suck out the juice.

Nell wants to know if the young cicadas are like the old ones. Indeed,
they would be cunning little things if they were, and--yes, they _would_
look very much like flies.

But the young cicadas are queer babies, indeed. They do not look very
much like their parents, although they have a head, a thorax, and an
abdomen.

[Illustration]

The female cicada makes a slit in the bark of the tree twig with her
ovipositor and lays the eggs there. As soon as they hatch out, the tiny
cicadas drop down to the ground and burrow into the earth.

You would not know that they are cicadas, they are such queer-looking
little things. But they have strong, sucking mouth parts with which they
pierce holes in the roots of trees and suck out the juices.

Of course these larvae grow and moult and continue to do so until they
have moulted a good many times and grown quite large.

They stay down under the ground two years.

At the end of that time they crawl up to the surface of the earth in the
early summer.

They climb trees, or weeds, or fence posts, and then the skin splits
down the back for the last time, and out comes a full-grown cicada with
bright glassy wings.

The