174 FROM A NEW ENGLAND HILLSIDE. 



the day we still hear the distant buzzing of 

 their calls ; but it is not near so loud as it 

 was ten days ago, and it does not attract 

 our attention in the early morning as it did 

 then. Wings are found here and there 

 upon the street, the related bodies having, 

 I imagine, been disposed of by the birds. 



A week ago, I went up on the hills to 

 make a nearer acquaintance with the com 

 pany. When fairly among them, the air 

 rang with their note, as if with the whir 

 ring of a considerable collection of light 

 machinery and gearing, with now and then 

 a curious rising inflection. It is quite 

 unlike the hot, dry rattle of our ordinary 

 locusts. I saw many of the insects them 

 selves, but they were far from being as 

 numerous as I remember them in the 

 Pennsylvania brood of a certain year that 

 shall be nameless. May I not have my 

 reticences ? If there was a pre-diluvian 

 period which I can look back upon, let us 

 assume it to have been vaguely a Saturnian 

 era, a Golden age, without beginning and 

 without end, the glamour of which still 

 lingers upon the hills of to-day. 



On this recent excursion, I did not see 

 any of the insects emerging from their 

 shells, as I frequently did in those early 



