14S THE PERIODICAL CICADA. 
ii(^'\v-.<prouted leaves from the tops of the trees without other harm, and in a 
month h'ft us." 
Tlie next reference to this insect is in a journal, dated 1715, left ( 
by the Rev. Andreas Sandel, rector of the Swedish congregation at 
Philadelphia. It is important as giving the first reference to the use 
by the native Indians of the cicadas as an article of diet, and has 
been recently published in the Penns^dvania Magazine of History and 
Biography. The note is as follows: 
May 9 [1715]. — In company with several English clergymen. Mr. Talbot. Ouemey,"^ 
and Clubb.b I went up to Radnor, where we laid the corner stone of a church. 
In this month some singular flies came out of the ground; the English call them 
locusts. When they left the ground holes could be seen everywhere in the roads, and 
especially in the woods. They were then encased in shells, out of which they crawled. 
It seemed most wonderful how being covered with the shell they were able to burrow 
their way in the hard ground, ^^^len they began to fl}^ they made a peculiar noise, 
and being found in great multitudes all over the country, their noise made the cow 
bells inaudible in the woods. They were also destructive, making slits in the bark 
of the trees, where they deposited their worms, which withered the branches. Swine 
and poultry ate them; but what was more astonishing, when they first appeared 
some of the people split them open and ate them, holding them to be of the same 
kind as those to have been eaten by John the Baptist. These locusts lasted not 
longer than up to June 10, and disappeared in the woods. 
Specimens of this insect for scientific study were 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 colonies 
between 1748 and 1751. The account of his travels, published in 
Stockholm between 1753 and 1761, contains much interesting informa- 
tion relative to the common insects of this country at that early 
period, and gives a brief statement of the habits of the periodical 
Cicada. ^Yliile this work was being printed, Pehr Kalm published 
a more detailed account of the species in the Swedish Transactions 
for 1756 (pp. 101-116). The account given in his travels (English 
edition, 1771, Vol. II, p. 6), 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 ^fay. an 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 only seen or heard single in the woods. 
a See Webster, Insect Life, Vol. II, p. 161. 
^ Rev. John Clubb, a "Welshman, for some time was schoolmaster in Philadelphia, 
and also assisted Rev. Evan Evans. He also preached to the Welsh settlers at Radnor 
and vicinity, and became rector of Holy Trinity Church. Oxford. He died in Decem- 
ber of 1715. (The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. XXX, 
October, 1906, pp. 448, 449.) 
