216 Seventeen-year Locust in 1846. 
rather unexpectedly by a fall of snow from the northwest, of four 
or five inches on the 25th. On the 26th at sunrise the tempera- 
ture was at 14°, and on the 27th at 10°. The cold continued 
only two days, and by the last of the month the snow had dis- 
appeared. This sudden severe weather injured much of the 
young tender wood of the grape vine and some other fruit trees. 
The first floating ice in the Ohio, was on the 22d of December. 
It remained only a few days, and the river has been navigable to 
the fore part of January, 1847, and twice since the winter com- 
menced there were nearly full banks, from the great rains. 
Cicada septendecim in 1846.—It is now seventeen years 
since, in 1829, this curious insect appeared. in this portion of Ohio. 
Its exit from the earth, where it had remained excluded from the 
light of day for so long a time, was looked for with considerable 
interest. They were first seen to come out of the ground on the 
14th of May, ascend some bush, fence, or tree, cast off their 
exuvie, and become a flying insect. They had been observed, 
near the surface, since the beginning of April, and were turned up 
by the plough, and dug out of the earth by hogs, which were 
very fond of them, as were also birds, domestic fowls and cats. 
Ata brick yard in Marietta, where the clay was dug from: the 
side of a hill, under the remains of an old orchard of apple trees, 
the workmen observed the cells of this insect in 1838, in the 
large masses of earth, broken off from the side of the bank. In 
1840, I visited the spot, collected several of the Cicada and pre- 
served them in spirit. Their cells, at that time, were measured 
and found to be a third less than in the seventeenth year. he 
cells are oval and very smooth within, they are two and a quarter 
inches long and three fourths of an inch in diameter, being suf- 
ficiently large for the single Cicada, which inhabits it, to move 
and turn round. Thus they dwell for sixteen years and ten 
months secluded in a grotto of their own construction. 
After the eggs of the female are deposited in the tender 
branches of trees, they remain two months or sixty days in the 
pith of the wood before they are hatched and ready to seek their 
home in the earth; and as they invariably ascend in May, soon 
after which the eggs are deposited, it makes their actual residence 
in the earth two.months short of seventeen years. The perfect 
insect lives about thirty days, and then perishes. In 1840, the 
cells were found to be from two and a half to four feet below the 
surface ; aud without any tube communicating with the top of 
the ground. The cells are probably water proof, as the flood of 
1832 covered the surface to the-depth of six or eight feet in my 
arden. In 1846 a large number of these insects emerged from 
the earth under an apple tree, in the branches of which the! pa- 
rent Cicada had deposited her eggs in 1829. If the water at that 
time, when only in their third year, had had access to their cells, 
