Aristotle, Second Part of THE HISTORY OF ANIMALS Complete

Translated by D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

Aristotle Bilingual Anthology  Studies  Aristotle in Print

II: 128 pages - You are on Page 38

They lay their eggs in fallow lands, boring a hole with the pointed organ they carry in the rear, as do the locusts likewise; for the locust lays its eggs in untilled lands, and this fact may account for their numbers in the territory adjacent to the city of Cyrene. The cicadae also lay their eggs in the canes on which husbandmen prop vines, perforating the canes; and also in the stalks of the squill. This brood runs into the ground. And they are most numerous in rainy weather. The grub, on attaining full size in the ground, becomes a tettigometra (or nymph), and the creature is sweetest to the taste at this stage before the husk is broken. When the summer solstice comes, the creature issues from the husk at night-time, and in a moment, as the husk breaks, the larva becomes the perfect cicada. creature, also, at once turns black in colour and harder and larger, and takes to singing. In both species, the larger and the smaller, it is the male that sings, and the female that is unvocal. At first, the males are the sweeter eating; but, after copulation, the females, as they are full then of white eggs.

If you make a sudden noise as they are flying overhead they let drop something like water. Country people, in regard to this, say that they are voiding urine, ie. that they have an excrement, and that they feed upon dew.

If you present your finger to a cicada and bend back the tip of it and then extend it again, it will endure the presentation more quietly than if you were to keep your finger outstretched altogether; and it will set to climbing your finger: for the creature is so weak-sighted that it will take to climbing your finger as though that were a moving leaf.

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