176 SECOND REPORT OF THE STATE ENTOMOLOGIST. 



Trees Attacked. 



Dr. Harris mentions the oak as being their favorite tree in Massachu- 

 setts, and that they may be seen in oak forests in the middle of June in 

 such immense numbers that they bend and even break down the Hnibs 

 of the trees by their weight. Of fruit trees they prefer the apple. 

 Above fifteen hundred Cicadas have been found to have emerged from 

 the ground beneath a single apple-tree, leaving the surface of the ground 

 "as full of holes as a honey-comb." Other recorded food-plants are 

 locust, peach, pear, EiqJcUoi'iuin, hickory, chestnut, hazelnut, willow, 

 poplar, Cottonwood, white cedar or 'arbor- vitse [Thuja occidentalis) , red 

 cedar [JnniperusVirginiana), and hemlock-spruce {Abies Canadensis) 



The Cicada is not entirely dependent upon the roots of trees for its 

 food. Although confined to timber lands, and not occurring in treeless 

 regions or in those that have been under cultivation for seventeen years, 

 yet in an instance recorded in Michigan, where the timber had been 

 cleared for sixteen j'ears and cultivated for most of that time, the Cicadas 

 came out of the ground the seventeenth year in the treeless fields quite 

 as numerously as among the timber. They appeared upon the same 

 day with the others, were as large, and to all appearance, equally well- 

 nourished, although for nearly their entire period, they must have sub- 

 sisted upon the roots of grasses and herbs. 



Some of the facts connected with their appearance under strange con- 

 ditions would indicate that their food-habits are yet far from being wholly 

 understood. In the instance recorded where they came up through the 

 ground floor of a cellar which had been dug to the depth of five feetj 

 it would be difficult to name the food — in kind and amount — that 

 could have supplied the requirements of the voracious larvae when ap- 

 proaching their maturity. 



Injuries to Vegetation. 



The injuries to trees are the result of the countless punctures 

 made in the twigs for the deposit of the eggs. The twigs shrivel and 

 die soon after the hatching of the eggs, and eventually are broken off 

 by the winds, and fall to the ground, which is often covered by the dead 

 material. A writer mentions the appearance of the forests in Pennsyl- 

 vania and Ohio for the distance of a hundred miles, just after the lo- 

 custs had left them — looking as if they had been scorched by a fire 

 driving through them. 



In the town of New Scotland, Albany county, N. Y., the Hudson 

 river valley brood was so abundant in the year 1826, that "they de- 

 stroyed the fruitage of the orchards almost completely. Nearly all the 



