II. 1. THE OAK. 119 



A more dangerous enemy is fortunately of much more rare 

 occurrence. The oak woods in some parts of the Old Colony, 

 are, at distant intervals, alarmed by the shrill, discordant rattle of 

 the seventeen- year Cicada or locust.* They sometimes come 

 out of the ground in such multitudes as, by their weight, to 

 bend and even break the limbs of the trees. Their long sub- 

 terranean residence has sufficed for the other ends of existence ; 

 they come to the light only to propagate and die. Their eggs 

 are deposited in great numbers in the pith of the smaller 

 branches of the oak, which are thus destroyed ; are broken off by 

 the winds or by their own weight, and remain hanging by the 

 bark, giving a gloomy appearance to the woods; or they fall with 

 their withered foliage to the earth. This, if annually repeated, 

 would be a fatal scourge. The long periods which intervene 

 before the return to the surface of the succeeding generation, 

 alone preserve the forests from entire destruction. 



Still more fatal are the ravages of those insects which invade 

 the trunks of the oak trees. The larva? of one of the Buprestian 

 beetles, (Chrysobothris femorata, ib. 4 — 5), bore into the trunk 

 of the white oak ; those of the timber beetles, {hymixylon and 

 Hyleccetus, ib. 52), make long cylindrical burrows in the solid 

 wood of the oak, while standing in health ; grubs of the northern 

 Brenihus, (Arrhenbdes septentrionalis, ib. 61), make similar bur- 

 rows in the trunk of trees which are beginning to decay, and 

 especially in those that have been cut down, which are attacked 

 during the first summer after they are felled ; the larva? of the 

 gray-sided Curculio, (Pandeleieins hilaris, ib. 62), make their 

 habitation in the trunk of the white oak ; and the grubs of the 

 horn-bug, (Lucamis capreolus, ib. 40), live in the trunk and 

 roots of old oaks, as well as in those of several other species of 

 trees. 



The white oak is liable to the attacks of an insect, which 

 punctures the small branches and introduces an egg, which has 

 such an effect upon the juices of the tree, as to form upon the 



* Cicada septendecim. Harris's Report on Insects, pp. 167—175. See the pas- 

 sages here referred to for a most interesting account of these insects. Though 

 called locusts in this country, they are very different from the locusts of history, 

 which are grasshoppers. 



