Twelfth Eeport of the State Entomologist 283 



May or early June. If the insect spends a week or more in the vicinity 

 of the surface, it is manifest that a burrow capped with one of the cham- 

 bers would be more secure than an open one. There are a number of 

 causes that might hasten this upward movement; <?. ^., the amount of 

 water in the soil, a greater supply of food nearer the surface, a restless- 

 ness of the insect as the time for its emergence approaches — often ob- 

 served in other insects, etc. The building of chambers at the 

 surface may not be so exceptional as at first appears. There are several 

 records of their being found in limited numbers under fallen leaves in 

 forests, and slightly above the surface in cultivated fields — in the latter 

 place hardly noticed until disturbed by the cultivator. It is probable that 

 they would have been found in many other localities than those recorded, 

 had search been made. Their being so often reported in 1894 on tracts 

 recently burned over may be entirely owing to their ready exposure to 

 the eye in such localities. 



First Notice of the Chambers. 

 The earliest notice that we have of these Cicada chambers is that of 

 observations made by Mr. S. S. Rathvon, of Lancaster, Pa., which were 

 communicated to Prof. Riley and published by him in his First Rcpo7't 

 on the Insects of Missouri^ accompanied by figures of a chamber received 

 from Mr. Rathvon. Prof. Riley mentions his having previously found 

 them in a field being plowed near St. Louis, Mo. The only other pub- 

 lished notice of the chambers prior to the widespread interest excited by 

 their occurrence in many places in the State of New York in 1894, ap- 

 pears to be one by Pxof J. S. Newberry, who in 1877 had his attention 

 called to their discox'cry in a cellar in New Jersey, and nine years later 

 published an account of them in the School of Mines Quarterly, vol. VII, 

 1886, pp. 152-154. As the communication is an interesting one and not 

 easily accessible, it is given herewith: 



Uneducated Reason in the Cicada, 



In 1877, a colony of the seventeen-year locusts (^Cicada seftendecitn) 

 appeared at Rahway, N. J. During the interval between the appearance 

 of that and the preceding generation, the town had been extended, and 

 some houses had been erected where forests or fields existed before. 



One of these houses — that belonging to Mr. Alonzo Jaques — was 

 constructed on the site of an old orchard, and had a shallow cellar. 

 This cellar was kept closed till about the time of the advent of the 

 Cicadas; the door was then opened, and the bottom of the cellar was 

 found to be thickly set with mud-cones or tubes, from six to eight inches 

 high, an inch to an inch and a half in diameter, each of which had been 



