INDIANA HORTICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 233 



SEVENTEEN - YEAR LOCUST. 



BY PROF. JAMES TROOP, PURDUE UNIVERSITY. 



Ladies and. Gentlemen— 1 have not prepared any regular speech for 

 this occasion, as I expected to come on this afternoon. I have prepared 

 a few points that may be of interest, in regard to the appearance of the 

 seventeen-year locust during the past summer. 



I suppose that the most of the people in this audience do not really 

 know that the seventeen-year locust is not a locust at all, that it is a 

 large bug. Now, that may seem to be of trifling importance, but when 

 we come to solve further differences in insects it becomes of a great deal 

 of importance whether it is a bug or something else. A bug, as we 

 understand it, has a different kind of mouth part from other insects. 

 As to its name, seventeen-year, of course this implies that it requires 

 seventeen years for its development. For example, the adult insect ap- 

 peared this summer, it lays its eggs, its young goes into the ground and 

 it requires seventeen years to complete its development— it remains in 

 the ground seventeen years before the adult makes its appearance. Some- 

 body asked in regard to the damage which this insect does. I find there 

 has been considerable annoyance in regard to that. From the appear- 

 ance of its mouth parts the insect is not believed to eat anything, in fact 

 it does not take very much food after it comes out in the adult state, for 

 the reason that it does all of its eating in the young state, the most of the 

 damage done by the insects is done by its egg laying, and the most of 

 you know how that is done, and the result of it. Most of us remember 

 that last year a good many articles appeared in the press advising against 

 planting fruit trees last fall or this spring on account of the seventeen- 

 year locust, because of the ravages that would take place in young 

 h-ees. In order to get at the facts of the case, and to get some notes on 

 the cicadse and to have them on records for future use, I prepared cir- 

 culars and sent out to every county in the State, to the Secretary of the 

 Farmers' Institute, and to others. I sent out 150 circulars on return 

 postal cards, with the questions printed on the return postal, so all that 

 was necessary to answer the questions was to drop the card in the post- 

 office. Those of you who have not had any experience in sending out 

 notices of this kind don't know what you have missed. Out of the first 

 150 I received fifty, 100 never showed up. Then I sent the second lot, 

 and twenty-five of that lot came back, and then I sent a third lot to the 

 counties I had not heard from, and the last one of the third lot returned 

 yesterday, so you see I have not had much time to prepare these statis- 

 tics. From these cards which I received, I find that the locust appeared 

 in eighty-three counties in this State: seven counties only in the State have 



