REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE. 116 
left by the Kev. Andrew Sandel, rector of the Swedish congregation at 
Philadelphia. It has little importance other than its reference to the 
use by the native Indians of the locusts as an article of diet. 
The knowledge of this insect seems to have been first carried to the 
Old World by Pehr Kalm, a pupil of Linne, who was sent to America 
by the Swedish Government and traveled extensively in the colonics 
between 1748 and 1751. The account of his travels, published in Stock- 
holm between 1753 and 17G1, contains much interesting information 
relative to the common insects of this country at that early period, and 
gives a brief statement of the habits of the periodical Cicada. While 
this work was being printed, Professor Kalm published a more detailed 
account of the species in the Swedish Transactions for 175G (pp. 101-11G). 
The account given in his travels (English edition, 1771, Vol. II, p. G), is 
as follows : 
There are a kind of locusts which about every seventeenth year come hither in 
incredible numbers. They come out of the ground in the middle of May, and make, 
for six weeks together, such a noise in the trees and woods that two persons that 
meet in such places, can not understand each other, unless they speak louder than 
the locusts can chirp. During that time, they make, with the sting in their tail, 
holes in the soft bark of the little branches on the trees, by which means these 
branches are ruined. They do no other harm to the trees or other plants. In the 
interval between the years when they are so numerous, they are ouly seen or heard 
single in the woods. 
The original scientific description of the species by Linne followed in 
1758. * Fabricius afterwards described the species in two or three of his 
works under the name Tettigonia septendecim, reviving one of the old 
generic names of Aristotle for this class of insects, but Latreille, 
Lamarck, and subsequent authors retained Linne's name. 
In his mon graphic work on the Cicadas of the world, 1788, Caspar 
Stoll, gives a figure and a short description of Cicada septendecim. 
Some popular accounts of the species closely followed Linne's descrip- 
tion. Under the title, "Soine observations on the Cicada of North 
America," Peter Collinson, esq., of London, England, gave a rather full 
account of the insect as then known, assigning fourteen or fifteen years 
as its life period, and published a plate illustrating the adult insect 
and a twig lacerated by the female. 2 Shortly thereafter appeared an 
article in Dodsley's Annual Register (17(57, p. 103), entitled, "Observa- 
tions on the Cicada or Locust of North America, which appears period- 
ically once in sixteen or seventeen years, by Moses Bar tram, 17(H). 
communicated by the ingenious Peter Collinson. M 
References to the periodical Cicada in American literature began to 
be more abundant toward the end of the eighteenth century and in 
the beginning of the nineteenth, Thomas Say. in 1S17. referring to 
" numerous accounts of it in our public prints." Most of these, how- 
ever, were unimportant notices and are now lost or not easily accessible. 
'Systems Natur®, tenth edition. 1758, p. L35. 
- J'hilos. Trans. 1764, vol. 54, pp. 65-69, 
