ted, are rare in nature. Coarse
soils are more usual, on which the tiny creatures could make no
impression. The larva must wander at hazard, must make a pilgrimage of
indefinite duration before finding a favourable place. Very many, no
doubt, perish, exhausted by their fruitless search. A voyage of
exploration in a country a few inches wide evidently forms part of the
curriculum of young Cigales. In my glass prison, so luxuriously
furnished, this pilgrimage is useless. Never mind: it must be
accomplished according to the consecrated rites.

At last my wanderers grow less excited. I see them attack the earth with
the curved talons of their fore-limbs, digging their claws into it and
making such an excavation as the point of a thick needle would enter.
With a magnifying-glass I watch their picks at work. I see their talons
raking atom after atom of earth to the surface. In a few minutes there
is a little gaping well. The larva climbs downwards and buries itself,
henceforth invisible.

On the morrow I turn out the contents of the vase without breaking the
mould, which is held together by the roots of the thyme and the wheat. I
find all my larvae at the bottom, arrested by the glass. In twenty-four
hours they had sunk themselves through the entire thickness of the
earth--a matter of some four inches. But for obstacle at the bottom they
would have sunk even further.

On the way they have probably encountered the rootlets of my little
plantation. Did they halt in order to take a little nourishment by
implanting their proboscis? This is hardly probable, for a few rootlets
were pressed against the bottom of the glass, but none of my prisoners
were feeding. Perhaps the shock of reversing the pot detached them.

It is obvious that underground there is no other nourishment for them
than the sap of roots. Adult or larva, the Cigale is a strict
vegetarian. As an adult insect it drinks the sap of twigs and branches;
as a larva it sucks the sap of roots. But at what stage does it take the
first sip? That I do not know as yet, but the foregoing experiment seems
to show that the newly hatched larva is in greater haste to burrow deep
into the soil, so as to obtain shelter from the coming winter, than to
station itself at the roots encountered in its passage downwards.

I replace the mass of soil in the vase, and the six exhumed larvae are
once more placed on the surface of the soil. This time they commence to
dig at once, and have s