THE CICADA SEPTENDECIM. 
207 
Massachusetts, and in the valley of the Connecticut River, as 
far north at least as Hadley; hut 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 humblehees,” 
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 Secretaiy 
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 obseiwed, 
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 veracitv. Their occurrence in large swarms at 
long inteiwals, like that of the migi’atoiy 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. 
