lo THE PERIODICAL CICADA. 
The following editorial from the old Valley Farmer of November, 
1855, will show how serious the injury may sometimes be: 
‘““We planted an orchard of the best varieties of apple trees last 
spring. We had taken particular pains, not only in selecting the best 
varieties, but in planting the trees, and hoped in a few years to par- 
take of the fruit. But our hopes were destined to be blasted. The 
locusts during the sunimer destroyed nearly all of them; not one in 
six is living. To look at them one would think that some person had 
been drawing the teeth of a saw over the bark of every tree.” 
It also appears that in some instances they injure trees by the in- 
sertion of their beaks for nourishment, for Mr. Gustavus Pauls, of 
Eureka, had a young apricot tree which was so thoroughly punctured in 
this manner that he took a gallon of coagulated sap from it, and he 
attributes the death of some of his trees to this cause. Iam convinced, 
however, that injury of this. kind is comparatively rare. 
On June 15, 1868, I was sent for by four different parties in Saint 
Louis County, who wished me to try and save their trees from the 
ruinous work of these Cicadas, which had by this time begun to deposit 
their eggs in earnest. I found that when the wind was high they 
could, by its aid, be driven to some extent, but that without its aid 
they could not be driven at all, as, when started, they are just as likely 
to fly behind as before you. I tried lye, whitewash, and sulphur, air- 
slacked lime, and finally carbolic acid, and found that none of these 
mixtures would affect them. Indeed, after experiments involving about 
$200, I am convinced that there is no available way of entirely pre- 
venting this ruinous work when they once commence to oviposit. The 
nursery of Mr. Stephen Partridge, a few miles west of Saint Louis, 
which is surrounded on all sides by timber, was more seriously injured 
than any other which I saw, and he lost many hundred dollars’ worth 
of apple, peach, and pear stock. They also punctured his grape-vines 
very freely, preferring the Clinton and Taylor among varieties. By 
having all hands turn out early in the morning, and between 6 and 7 
o’clock in the evening, while the insects hung listlessly to the branches, 
he succeeded in crushing thousands of them, and thus saved parts of bis 
nursery from total ruin. But it becomes a hopeless task to try to stay 
their disastrous work when once they have acquired full power of flight; 
though, while in their feeble and helpless condition, as they leave the 
ground, they can not only be destroyed to far greater advantage. by 
human agency, but hogs and poultry of all kinds eagerly devour tiein. 
There were, it is true, many accounts afloat in 1568 of hogs being 
poisoned by them, and, though it is not impossible that one was occa- 
sionally killed by over-glutting,* such cases were very rare indeed. 
*Mr. T. R. Allen, of Allenton, informs me that during years when the Army Worm 
(Leucania unipuncta, Haw.) occurred in such swarms, hogs and chickens feasted on 
them to such an extent that the former frequently died, while the latter laid eggs in 
which the parts naturally white would be entirely green when cooked. 
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