THE CICADA SEPTENDECIM. 207 



Massachusetts, and in the valley of the Connecticut River, as 

 far north at least as Hadley ; but does not seem to have ex- 

 tended to other parts of the State. The earliest account that 

 we have of it is contained in Morton's " Memorial," wherein 

 it is stated that " there was a numerous company of flies, 

 which were like for bigness unto wasps or bumblebees," 

 which appeared in Plymouth in the spring of 1633. " They 

 came out of little holes in the ground, and did eat up the 

 green things, and made such a constant yelling noise as made 

 the woods ring of them, and ready to deafen the hearers." 

 Judge Davis, in the Appendix to his edition of Secretary 

 Morton's " Memorial," states that these insects appeared in 

 Plymouth, Sandwich, and Falmouth, in the year 1804 ; but, 

 if the exact period of seventeen years had been observed, 

 they should have returned in 1803. Circumstances may 

 occasionally retard or accelerate their progress to maturity, 

 but the usual interval is certainly seventeen years, accord- 

 ing to the observations and testimony of many persons of 

 undoubted veracity. Their occurrence in large swarms at 

 long intervals, like that of the migratory locusts of the East, 

 probably suggested the name of locusts, which has commonly 

 been applied to them in this country. The following extract 

 from a letter * from ■ the late Rev. Ezra Shaw Goodwin, of 

 Sandwich, contains some interesting particulars which this 

 gentleman had the kindness to communicate to me. 



" I have not been unmindful of what you said to me re- 

 specting the locust insects, nor of the promise I made you 

 with respect to them. They appeared in this town in the 

 year 1821, in the middle of June. Their last previous ap- 

 pearance was in 1804, and their last, previous to that, was 

 in 1787. I ascertained these periods from the statements 

 of individuals, who remembered that it was locust-year 

 when this or that event occurred; as, when this one was 

 married, or that one's eldest , son was born ; events, the date 

 of which the husband or the parent would not be very likely 



* Dated October 19, 1832. 



