216 [Assembly 



mous devourer, having powerful jaus. The cicada cannot, eat^ 

 having no jaws, being only furnished with a proboscis, or sucker.. 

 The true locust has opaque wings, the upper ones very nairi»Wy 

 and the under ones expansive, forming a semicircle. The cicada 

 has transparent wings, the fore wings being more expansive tlian 

 the lower ones. The true locust has the power to hop, having 

 long hind legs. The cicada never hop?, having very short hind 

 legs. They are, in fact, not locusts but cicadcB. But as the seventeen- 

 year and the dog-day cicada are so familiarly known to us as lo- 

 custs, after thus defining their true position, in the remainder of 

 this report I shall call them by that familiar nomenclature. 



The seventeen year locust, or cicada septemdecim of Linm uSy 

 is of a black color, the thick anterior ridge and large veins of the 

 wings, orange red; the eyes, when living, and the rings of the 

 body are also reddish; expanse of wings two and a half to three 

 inches. They generally appear in oak f irests about the middle 

 of June, but are by no means confined to those trees, but vi.^it 

 forest trees very familiarly. After pairing, the female pierces a 

 moderately sized bough, forming a groove therein, in which .>he 

 deposits from 15 to 20 eggs. This nest she carefully covers with 

 the small splints which she had removed by means of the pit rcer 

 and saw with which she is provided. She then proceeds above 

 on the same bough, makes another fissure and another nest, and 

 another, and so on to the end ot the bough. One female has been 

 observed to deposit over fifty such nests in one bough. She thus 

 continues providing for e succession of her kind until she be- 

 comes so exhausted that she falls to the earth and dies. Soon 

 after the eggs are hatched the punctured limbs mostly wither and 

 die, thus frequently blasting a whale orchard, or even forest. 



Dr. Potter says the eggs are 52 days in hatching. The young, 

 at first, are somewhat grublike, being but the 16th of an inch, of 

 a whitish color, and even tlien there are f »ur little prouiint iices 

 on the thorax, which contain the germ of its future wings. Un- 

 der its brea-t is a long beak or sy{)hon fo suction. Upon its de- 

 liverance from tlie egg its first elFort is to reach the earth, which 

 it accompH>hes, not as is generally supposed, by the bough bi cak- 

 ing off, but th^y instantly run to the side of the bough, take a 



