Notes and Gleanings. 251 



The Locusts. — Thirteen - Year and Seventeen - YearTi'ibes. — We liave before 

 referred to a valuable manuscript-work of the late Dr. Gideon B. Smith, of this 

 city, on the locusts which are now swarming and singing in the country around 

 us. It appears that there are not only seventeen-year but thirteen-year locusts ; 

 and the work of the deceased author embraces the scientific description of the 

 insect as given by naturalists, its history and its habits in its winged and under- 

 ground states, its geographical distribution over this country, and its regular ap- 

 pearance in the di.Terent districts. In the previous notice, we mentioned the 

 conclusion established by the extensive researches of Dr. .Smith, that this locust, 

 in depositing its ^%^, does all the harm of which it is capable. It has no other 

 mouth, or means of taking food, than three small hairs in its snout, which, in 

 feeding, are spread out over the surface of the roots or leaves of trees ; and these 

 collect the vegetable juice, and carry it by capillary attraction to the stomach. 

 Even the injury done in depositing their eggs to shrubbery of value can be 

 guarded against by carefully covering it, from the ist to the 20th of June, with 

 cheap gauze. We add a few more of the many interesting facts mentioned by 

 Dr. Smith. He ascertained that they had been noticed in Maryland, Pennsyl- 

 vania, and Delaware in 1766, 1783, 1800, 1817, iS34(the date of his work), and 

 then afterwards in 185 1 and i863 ; thus establishing their regular appearance in 

 this district every seventeen years. They do not appear the same year in every 

 district ; but each district has a different year for their appearance from that of any 

 neighboring district. Dr. Smith says that the locust is emphatically an American 

 republican insect, and found only in the United States : and that there are two tribes 

 of these insects, differing from each other only in the periods of their lives, — 

 the largest family, the northern, living seventeen years ; and the other, the south- 

 ern, thirteen years. Generally these insects begin to leave the ground about the 

 2oth of May, and increase in numbers till about the 27th of that month, when 

 the greatest numbers will appear ; and then in less numbers till about the 5th of 

 June, when no more will leave the earth. About the 1 5th of June, they commence 

 depositing their eggs ; which continues until about the 20th of June, when they 

 cease. The female lays about four hundred eggs, excavating holes for that 

 purpose in the limbs or twigs, to which they are attached by a singularly con- 

 structed instrument, about the size of a small pin, designated as the ovipositor. 

 About the 25th of June, the old locusts disappear altogether. About the 25th of 

 July, the eggs are ready to hatch ; the insects come out of the excavations, and 

 fall to the ground in great numbers ; and so small, that they are like little motes 

 in the air ; and their apparent specific gravity so inferior, that they are not injured 

 by the fall. Well does Dr. Smith observe, that, in the whole range of natural 

 history", there is nothing more strange than the fact that a little insect not as 

 large as the smallest ant shall pass into the ground and remain there seventeen 

 years, and then emerge in the form of a comparatively large insect; and that 

 most tribes should re-appear the same month, and almost the same day, once 

 in seventeen or thirteen years, according to the district to which they belong. 

 Having made its way into the earth, it lives during the remainder of the warm 

 season in the vegetable subsoil, and on the approach of cold weather forms 

 around itself a cocoon, or cell, by cementing th^ particles of earth together; in 



