18 



THE LANCASTER FARMER. 



ond day of February. 1881, possibly the only 

 instance of such an occm-reiice on record ; 

 and if it has no other significance it might 

 have illustrated that this insect passes at least 

 four months in the pupa state. It is pretty 

 well established that this insect makes its ap- 

 pearance, in certain localities, every seven- 

 teea years; and although these septendecenial 

 periods may be broken, by broods appearing 

 earlier or later than the regular seventeen 

 year period, still there always are seventeen 

 years intervening between the appearance of 

 the respective broods, except in the case of 

 broods which appear every thirteen years, and 

 this difference has been deemed sufficient to 

 establish a new species known as the " thir- 

 teen year locust (CicacZa tridecim). Now, the 

 ragular seventeen year period of the cicada in 

 Lancaster county will not occur until the 

 year 1885, with perhaps a few irregular excep- 

 tions, alluded to above. This year will be the 

 regular period for the thirteen years species, 

 w^iierever it occurred thirteen j'ears ago ; but 

 I do not regard the specimen now before me 

 as absolutely .belonging to the thirteen year 

 variety, or species. 



A Green-House Production. 



This individual evolved in the green-house 

 of Mr. George O. Hensel, the enterprising 

 florist of East Orange street, in this city, and 

 its history is very probably as follows. In or 

 about the month of Juue. 1864, Mr. Hensel 

 was employed in the peach region of the State 

 of Delaware, and on his return to his home 

 in Lancaster, he brought with him about 

 fifty living specimens (more or less), which he 

 set at liberty in the neighborhood of where 

 he now resides, and it is possible there will 

 be a reappearance of that limited brood the 

 present year. Last fall (October or Novem- 

 ber) Mr. Hensel erected a new green-house, 

 and in digging the foundations he exhumed 

 large numbers of the larva of the cicada of at 

 least two different sizes. These may have be- 

 longed to the two difterent broods. They 

 were so numerous that in a square foot he 

 counted fifty of them. The individual before 

 me was included within the enclosure, after it 

 was finished, and doubtless mistook the genial 

 temperature of the green-house for summer, 

 which caused its rapid and premature devel- 

 opment. I said above that this occurrence 

 miiiM have illustrated that the cicada passes 

 at least four months in the ^nyice state, but 

 unfortunately Mr. H. did not preserve and 

 present to me specimens, in order that I 

 might have determined whether they were 

 larvce or jmpce, which would not have been 

 ditficult to do. 



Pupae and Larvae. 



In the piipm the rudimental wings are al- 

 ways present, but never in the larvce, hence 

 those that come up out of the ground in May 

 or June, every seventeen years, nxe 2Jiipre. On 

 the removal of a solid brick pavement in 

 North Duke street, Lancaster, ih 1869, at ft 

 place where there was no pavement in 1851, 

 but instead thereof a number of trees, a large 

 number of the cicades were found in a pupa 

 state; these, of course, were retarded individ- 

 uals, on account of the pavement, through 

 which they could not penetrate ; but when, or 

 how long before that period it was that they 

 assumed the ptcpa form is not known. I liave 

 found, and have had also given me, the larva 

 of cidada three, five, nine and eleven years 

 after the regular period of their advent, but 

 none of them had the remotest appearance of 

 wings, and at seasons, too, which precluded 

 the probability of their being the larva of the 

 annual-cicada. The premature subject before 

 me is a female, and is minus the abdominal 

 tympani or drums, with which the male pro- 

 duces his musical notes. Anacreon sang 

 beautifully of these "happy creatures," and 

 accords to them the attributes of "a demi- 

 god, at least," but Xenarchus, the incorrigi- 

 ble Rhodian sensualist," intimates a different 

 reason for their happiness in — 

 "Happy the cicadas' lives 

 Since they all have voiceless wives !" 



"We have an annual species that makes its 



appearance about the first of August, but it is 

 much larger than the seventeen year species, 

 and its music is harsher ,ind louder ; and, hi 

 looking at the two, we may well wonder why 

 it is that the one passes through all its trans- 

 formations within a single year, whilst the 

 other requires seventeen years to accomplish 

 the same routine of development. 



I have seen, heard and handled the seven- 

 teen year cicada, or locust, four times, name- 

 ly, in 1817, iu 1834, in 1851, and in 1868, and 

 the Linnaean Society has in its collection spe- 

 cimens of those four periods, and also of 1800. 

 All the superstitions and horrific apprehen- 

 sions attached to these insects are repeated 

 every seventeen years, as regularly as the in- 

 sects make their advent amongst us. The 

 generations of their last appearance do not 

 seem to have derived any benefit from the ex- 

 perience of tliose of their foriner~visits. The 

 newspapers of 1868 were full of their devas- 

 tations of the vegetable kingdom — stripping 

 all the trees, plants, and shrubbery of their 

 foliage. This surely could not have been the 

 cicada ; indeed, I question very much if a 

 single well-authenticated ease is on record of 

 their ever having partaken of any kind of 

 food at all during their imago period. If they 

 have, it must have been in a fluid form. The 

 females, however, do injure the branches of 

 trees by rasping incisions, and depositing 

 their eggs therein. 



FORESTS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 



Editor Lancaster Farmer— Dear Sir : 

 I was amazed to read in The Lancaster 

 Farsier, at page 182, " Was Pennsylvania a 

 forest country ? Professor Me.ehan seems to 

 think it was not." 



Permit me to say that I have never given 

 any such an opmion. I well know that the 

 State was wholly under forest with the excep- 

 tion of the very few larger valleys, of which 

 there is some reasonable doubt. I have never 

 anywhere uttered anything to warrant your 

 correspondent's assertion that I have seemed 

 to advance otherwise. 



Very truly yours, 



Thomas Meehan. 



" "Was Pennsylvania a forest country ? 

 Prof. Meehan seems to have advanced the 

 opinion that it was not." This is the lan- 

 guage of our correspondent " Warwick," on 

 page 182 of the 12th volume of the Farmer. 



In order to do justice to Prof. Meehan, and 

 to illustrate just how far Warmick may have 

 apprehended or »nisapprehended him, we will 

 quote what he says touching this subject, in 

 his paper read before the "State Board of 

 Agriculture," and published in the January 

 number of the Oardener^s Monthly for 1881. 



" In going through the Shenandoah Valley 

 of Virginia, the absence of any remarkably 

 old trees was apparent, and Maj. Hotchkiss 

 furnished proof entirely satisfactory thai 

 when the white man settled in the valley it 

 was wholly clear of timber, and that most of 

 the immense quantity we find there now, has 

 grown up during the past one or two hundred 

 years. In like manner the probability is that 

 in all the large valleys of Pennsylvania there 

 was no wood at the early settlement of the State.''' 

 Prof. M. then adds, "This is the tradition 

 among almost all who have had family estates 

 for several generations ; and this is confirmed 

 bv tlie recent investigations of Dr. Joseph 

 Leidy, of the Philadelphia Academy of Nat- 

 ural Sciences, who reported to that body re- 

 cently the finding the bones of the buffalo in 

 caves of northeastern " Pemisylvania. " And 

 further: "Indeed, the tradition is, especially 

 in the Cumberland valley, that these valleys 

 were annually fired by the Indians, chiefly 

 that the trees might be kept down, and food 

 provided for the buffalo instead." 



Warwick says, the age of the majectic for- 

 est of the present period, generally ranges, 

 by counting the annual growths, from 150 to 

 200 years." And, "The uplands were burned 

 over occasionally if not annually." Also, 

 "No general and extensive forest fires are 

 likely to have occurred after 1680." Now, it 

 seems to us, that these several statements are I 



[February, 



rather corroberative than otherwise. Tlie In- 

 dians must have had som.e object in firing the 

 uplands annually, and who cpn tell that that 

 object may not have been to keep down the 

 trees, in order that the buffalo miglit be pro- 

 vided with food, especially sinc« buffalo bones 

 (if tliey were not the bones of Jones's mule) 

 have been found in Pennsylvania caves. If we 

 were to write an essay on this subject we 

 should quote both of these writers in the af- 

 firmative of the theory that Pennsylvania 

 was once destitute of timber where it is now 

 found abundantly. 



THE LATE POULTRY SHOW. 



The second annual exhibition of the Lan- 

 caster County Poultry Association closed on 

 Wednesday evening, January 19, and it scor- 

 ed a financial suece.ss. The receipts at the 

 door were about S400 leaving the society SlOO 

 better off than before the show. The re- 

 ceipts were §25 in exce.>*s of those of last year, 

 but the profit Vras larger because the entry 

 fees were much higher. It is estimated that 

 nenrly 5,000 people visited the show, includ- 

 ing the school children at five cents each, and 

 the complimentary tickets. On Thursday 

 morning all was confusion about Roberts' 

 Hall, the exhibitors being busily engaged in 

 removing their exhibits. All "the exhibits 

 were found by the exhibitors in as good con- 

 dition as when they were given into the soci- 

 ety's keeping, with a single exception, and 

 the damage done to it certainly deserves no 

 milder term than that of 



A Dastardly Trick. 



Some time during Wednesday evening, and 

 unobserved by any oue, some heartless rascal 

 seized the mail golden pheasant by the tail 

 and pulled out nearly all of his beautiful 

 plumage, 'xhe bird is not injured, physically, 

 liut his beauty is sadly marred. 



We clip tlie above from the £ra, and feel 

 gratified that some things can be a "success " 

 in Lancaster county. The great secret of the 

 success of the Poultry Society may be mainly 

 attributed to the/act that it undertakes and 

 carries through its enterprise with ewersf^, and 

 tlie association, as a unit, assumes therespon- 

 sibility, without which, almost any eiiter- 

 prise would fliil. When those who ought to 

 be leaders and exemplers in an enterprise 

 manifest a disposition to "shirk the responsi- 

 bility," in nine cases out of ten, the thing is 

 already, to all interests and purposes, con- 

 demned to failure. " A house divided against 

 itself cannot stand ;" it is contrary to the 

 usual order of things— it is contrary to the 

 inculcations of Divine authority. There is a 

 sense in which, " he that js not for us is 

 against us." If a. respectable majority of a 

 society determine on a worthy enterprise, it 

 is not creditable to a minority to hang with 

 indifference on its "ragged edges." But one 

 sentiment ought to pervade the whole society, 

 and that — success. 



The success of the late poultiy exhibition 

 redeems the failure of the agricultural and 

 horticultural exhibition of last fall, so far as 

 the county is concerned, but it cannot com- 

 pensate the disappointment experienced by 

 the sponsors of the latter, nor exonerate any 

 one from the responsibility of that failure. 



Another element of success in the chicken 

 show was the fact that it was gotten up by 

 live chicken fanciers — by interested amateurs 

 and professionals, and in the interest of 

 cliicken culture. It did not depend on dis- 

 interested outsiders. The members of the so- 

 ciety knew they could not expect success with- 

 out energetic labor, and for this they planned 

 and schemed. It was admirably conceived 

 and executed. Again, it had but one object, 

 or idea, and that was chickens, and what pri- 

 marily and subordinately relates to chickens. 

 Its success, however, is not to be measured 

 by its money receipts; it was a success witb- 

 out that. Compared with the magnitude of 

 the exhibition, and the quality of the "goods" 

 displayed, the income was quite ordinary; 

 still it was much better to realize a surplus 

 than to "fall short " that amount. A chick- 

 en show too, is more limited — more distinctly 



