MOBNING IN THE NOBTH WOODS. 115 



ring. Heard at the right distance, the 

 sound has a curious resemblance, noticed 

 again and again, to the far-away, barely- 

 audible buzz of an electric car. For a week 

 the air of the valley woods had been full of 

 it. I wondered over it for a day or two, 

 with no suspicion of its origin. Then, as I 

 waited for a car at the base of Missionary 

 Ridge, a colored man who stood beside me 

 on the platform gave me, without meaning 

 it, a lesson in natural history. 



" The locuses are goin' it, this mornin', 

 ain't they ? " he said. 



" The locuses ? " I answered, in a tone of 

 inquiry. 



" Yes. Don't you hear 'em ? " 



He meant my mysterious universal hum, 

 it appeared. But even then I did not know 

 that he spoke of the big, red-eyed cicada 

 that I had picked off a fence a day or two 

 before and looked at for a moment with 

 ignorant curiosity. And even when, by 

 dint of using my own eyes, I learned so 

 much, I was still unaware that this cicada 

 was the famous seventeen-year locust. Here 

 in the north woods I more than once passed 

 near a swarm of the insects. At short range 



