The total collection amounted to several hundreds.

They were divided, by very clearly marked differences of size, into three categories: the large larvae, with rudiments of wings, such as those larvae caught upon leaving the earth possess; the medium-sized, and the small.

Each of these stages must correspond to a different age.

To these we may add the larvae produced by the last hatching of eggs, creatures too minute to be noticed by my rustic helpers, and we obtain four years as the probable term of the larvae underground.
The length of their aerial existence is more easily computed.

I hear the first Cigales about the summer solstice.