SB 
818 
C3768 
ENT 
oO. 74. 
ited States Department of Agriculture, 
BUREAU OF ENTOMOLOGY, 
L. O. HOWARD, Entomologist and Chief of Bureau. 
THE PERIODICAL CICADA IN 1906. 
(Tibicen septendecim L.) 
By C. L. MARLATT, 
Entomologist and Acting Chief in Absence of Chief. 
Two broods of the periodical cicada will reappear this year, one an 
important and widely distributed seventeen-year brood and the other 
an unimportant, small, and scattering thirteen-year brood. 
SEVENTEEN-YEAR BROOD XIV. 
The localities where this brood may be expected are indicated on the 
map (fig. 2) on page 3. This brood has a peculiar interest, inasmuch 
as it is the one which was 
first noted, or recorded in 
literature at least, by the 
early European colonists 
on this continent. The 
earliest mention of this 
peculiar insect is that 
given in the work enti- 
tled “‘New England’s Me- 
moriall,’’? by Nathaniel 
Moreton, printed at Cam- 
bridge, Mass., in 1669. 
The following | tran- 
Fig. 1 —The periodical cicada (Tibicen septendecim): a, 
scription of this account. adult; b, same, side view: c, shed pupal skin. Natu- 
ral size (original). 
reproduced from Bulletin 
No. 14, new series, of this Bureau, is taken from an editorial note to an 
article on the “‘ Locust of North America’’ in the Barton Medical and 
Physical Journal of 1804 (Vol. I, pp- 52-59). Referring to Moreton, 
the editor says: 
IoD 
Speaking of a sickness which, in 1635, 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 com- 
pany 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 
