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Notes on certain parts of the State of Ohio. 327 
two and three feet in length, and of a most disagreeable and 
disgusting appearance. 
Cray-fish are very abundant in the low grounds: they are 
sometimes found six inches in length, and weighing nearly 
halfa pound. They taste very much like the lobster; and, 
like him, have the property of reproducing their antenne, or 
their limbs, when broken off, in the course of a few weeks. I 
‘have tasted their claws, when broken from the live animal, 
and found them really salt or brackish, like an oyster or lob- 
ster. Land snails abound in the woods; and in the spring 
and fall, after a fire has destroyed the leaves, the ground in 
many places is seen almost covered with their calcined shells, 
I have noticed only one kind of them. We have a species of 
insect which resembles the snail, but is destitute of a shell. It 
is common in our gardens, and is fond of crawling upon ripe 
fruit, which it finds on the ground, such as peaches, melons, 
&e. 
Our insects are so numerous and so various, that it would 
take a volume to describe them alone. One of the most in- 
teresting and curious of this class is the Cicada. It nearly re- 
sembles the harvest-fly, but issmaller. They are said to ap- 
pear only at stated periods, which some have fixed at seven- 
teen, and others at fourteen years. I have one record oftheir 
appearing in this country, the 14th of May, 1812. I was 
then told it was seventeen years since they were last here, 
viz. in 1795. They gradually disappeared, and by the 
first of July were all gone. ‘The month of May was cold and 
wet, and very unfavourable to the egress of the cicada from 
the earth. From the 24th of May to the 3d of June, their 
numbers increased daily, at an astonishing rate. The cicada, 
or ‘ locust,” as he is vulgarly called, when he first rises from 
the earth, is about an inch and a half in length, and one third 
of an inch in thickness. While making his way to the sur- 
face, he has the appearance of a large worm or grub; the 
hole which he makes is about the same diameter with his 
body, perpendicular, and seems to be made with equal 
ease through the hardest clay or softest mould. When 
they first rise from the earth, which is invariably in the 
night, they are white and soft. They then attach them- 
selves to some bush, tree, or post, and wait until the ac-. 
tion of the air has dried the shell with which they are enve- 
loped: the shell then bursts on the back for about one third of 
its length, and through this opening the cicada creeps, as from 
aprison, ‘Their bodies are then very tender, and they can 
