1896.] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. 51 



I suspect that there is a difference of habit in broods that 

 appear in dilferent years, or in different places. 



Harris states that the female, after depositing her eggs, 

 goes back on the branch and saws it partly off, so that 

 the leaves die and the end of the branch breaks off and 

 soon drops to the ground, and I have in former years 

 seen the same thing myself, but daring this visit, although 

 the woods near this place were swarming with them, and 

 hardly a branch of any kind of deciduous tree could be 

 found that was not filled with eggs, no dead leaves were 

 to be seen except upon the beech the outer branches of 

 which were so small that the numerous cuts nearly girdled 

 them. There were certainly no cuts made across the 

 branches below the eggs. 



Another curious circumstance connected with the ap- 

 pearance of these insects of which I have not seen men- 

 tion made, is the most remarkable unanimity with 

 which they came forth from their underground residences. 



Is it possible that such an innumerable multitude, scat- 

 tered over several square miles in extent, as in this vicin- 

 ity, and living under varying conditions of food, tempera- 

 ture, moisture, &c., for seventeen years, should reach the 

 mature state and undergo their last metamorphosis on 

 almost exactly the same day, or do they have some system 

 of underground telegraphy, or psychologic mind-reading 

 by which there is a general understanding that all shall 

 leave their subterranean abodes at once. Certain it is that 

 in this neighborhood, on the 21th day of May, nobody 

 had noticed their appearance, but on the 25th everybody 

 knew they were here and the woods resounded with the 

 music of their drums. 



Remember the meeting of the American Microscopical 

 Society at Pittsburg. 



