THE CICADA IN LITERATURE. 147 
Prior to the discovery of the above record the earliest published 
account known was that referred to in Bulletin 14 (new series) of 
the Division of Entomology, page 112, given in a work entitled 
‘“New England’s Memoriall,’’ by Nathaniel Moreton, printed at 
Cambridge, Mass., in 1669. I was unable to get the work cited, 
but an account seen by me was a quotation from it published in an 
editorial note to an article on the ‘‘Locust of North America,’ in 
Barton’s Medical and Physical Journal of 1804. The brood referred 
to by Moreton is undoubtedly the same one referred to above, but 
the occurrence of seventeen years previous. Moreton, publishing of 
an event happening thirty-six years after it occurred, evidently 
made a mistake of one year, the occurrence not being 1633, as stated 
by him, but 1634. We have records of this brood in New England 
from 1787 to 1906. The records, if any were made of it after 1651 
and prior to 1787, have not been discovered.? 
The quotation from Moreton referred to follows: 
Speaking of a sickness which, in 1633, carried off many of the whites and Indians, 
in and near to Plimouth [Plymouth], in Massachusetts, he says, ‘‘It is to be observed, 
that the Spring before this Sickness, there was a numerous company of Flies, which, 
were like for bigness unto Wasps or Bumble-Bees, they came out of little holes in the 
ground, and did eat up the green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as 
made all the woods ring of them, and ready to deaf the hearers; they were not any 
of them heard or seen by the English in the Country before this time: But the Indians 
told them that sickness would follow, and so it did, very hot in the months of June, 
July and August of that Summer,” viz. 1633. He says, ‘‘Toward Winter the sick- 
ness ceased;’’ and that it was ‘‘a kinde of a pestilent Feaver.’’—New England’s 
Memoriall, &c., pp. 90 and 91. 
The fact noted, namely, that the native Indians associated the recur- 
rences of this insect with pestilential diseases, is interesting, as showing 
that the Cicada had probably‘long been sake observation by them 
and had exerted a vivid influence on their imaginations. 
One of the earliest references on this continent to the periodical 
Cicada is recorded in Steadman’s Library of American Literature, vol- 
ume 1, pages 462-463. It is from the writings of an individual signing 
himself “'T. M.,”’ supposed to have been Thomas Matthews, son of 
Samuel Matthews, governor of Virginia. It was written in 1705, and 
refers to three prodigies which are said to have appeared in that coun- 
try about the year 1675,° and which, from the attending disasters, 
were looked upon as ominous presages. One of these was the appear- 
ance of a large comet; another, the flight of enormous flocks of 
pigeons; and the last, relating evidently to the periodical Cicada, as 
follows: 
The third strange appearance was swarms of flies about an inch long and as big as 
the tip of a man’s little finger, rising out of spigot holes in the earth, which eat the 
@See Proc. Ent. Soc. Wash., v, pp. 126-127, February, 1903. 
b There is no recorded brood which could have appeared in 1675, and the year meant 
is probably either 1673 or 1676, both of which were cicada years. 
