150 THE PERIODICAL CICADA. 
of a brood in the neicrli])()rli()()(l of Pliiladelphia in 1749. wliich l)egan 
to emercre May 10, but "in the latter end of April * * * came 
so near the surface of the o^round, that the hogs rooted up the ground 
for a foot deep, all about the htdges and fences, under trees in search 
of them." There follow quite accurate notes on o\4position. The 
editor concludes the article by the citation from Moreton wliich has 
been already (pioted. 
Thomas Say, the father of American entomology, has one brief 
conununication on the periodical Cicada, in which he criticises the 
use of the name 'Mocust," and gives references to earlier literature 
and a brief note on habits." 
Another interesting communication of about the same period is by 
Dr. J. F. Davis,^ in which the author controverts the " 14 or 15" year 
period suggested by Collinson and quotes two letters, one from the 
Hon. Judge Peters, of Belmont, Pa., and the other from flyers Fisher, 
esq., of Philadelphia, to substantiate the 17-year period. Referring 
to the noise of this Cicada, Judge Peters says: 
One of your Spa-fields meetings can give you a faint idea of their incessant and 
unmusical cheering and noise. If Hogarth had known these locusts, he would have 
placed them about the ears of his enraged musician. Knife-gi'indei's, ballad singers, 
etc., would have been lost in their din. 
Mr. Fisher gives a very accurate, though brief, statement of the 
Hfe cycle of the species (if his belief that they occur at great depths be 
excepted), and adds the very significant statement that ''there is 
reason to believe that they appear every year in some part or other 
of the United States, with the complete period of 17 3^ears between 
every local appearance." 
Dr. S. P. Hildreth, of Marietta, Ohio, made two ver}' valuable con- 
tributions on the Cicada to the American Journal of Science and Ai'ts 
(1826 and 1830), which are much more accurate than any of the earlier 
papers and too long to be quoted in tliis place. In the second of 
these papers he calls attention to the existence of the small form of 
Cicada, and gives a colored plate representing five views of the adult 
insect. Doctor Plildreth published a third paper also in 1847.*' 
The fu'st account of this insect to be issued as a separate work is the 
memoir of Prof. Nathaniel Potter, of Baltimore, Md., entitled "Notes 
on the Locusts," etc., written in 1834 and privately published in 1839. 
This pamphlet of twenty-nine pages and one colored plate, represent- 
ing the insect in both sexes and also the early stages, together with 
the nature of its work on twigs, and anatomical details, was the cliief 
source of information for the accoimt published by Harris in his 
''Insects Injurious to Vegetation," and while containing some wrong 
a Mem. Phila. Soc. Prom. Agric, 1818, v. 4, p. 225. 
6 Jour. Sci. and Arts Roy. Inst., 1819, v. G, pp. 372-374. 
c Loc. cit., ser. 2, vol. 3, pp. 216-218. 
