THE NATURALIST AND COLLECTOR 
29 
A Cicada Year. 
P ROFESSOR HOWARD showed 
the correspondent of the Inter 
Ocean his time table, which in¬ 
dicates the future movements of every 
kind of insect in the country. Since 
the locust, or more properly the cicada, 
never has failed to return exactly thir¬ 
teen or seventeen years, as the case 
may be. after its former appearance, 
this schedule may be depended upon 
as most accurate, The eggs which 
hatched out this year’s crop were de¬ 
posited in thousands of trees through¬ 
out the territory of the last outbreak, 
and thus the exact location of this 
year’s plague may be correctly prophe¬ 
sied, although no doubt these buzzing 
armies will overrun their former battle 
ground after they appear. 
Its common miscalling is due to a 
general confusion of the periodical in¬ 
sect with the annual locust of the East, 
which differs little in form from the 
American grasshopper. Thus the grass¬ 
hopper is more properly a locust than 
isithe cicada. There is but one genus in 
America which may correctly be called 
a locust. This is the Rocky Mountain 
locust, or ‘ hateful grasshopper,” which 
inhabits the arid plains east of the 
Rockies. In 1877 Congress appointed 
an entomological congress to report on 
this insect, whose propensities for de¬ 
struction are famous throughout the 
world. The cicada differs materially 
from the locust in shape. The former 
has a thick body, with short, straight 
legs, while the latter is slender a,nd his 
hind legs are long* and hinged high 
above his back, like those of the grass¬ 
hopper. The Old World locusts, inhab¬ 
iting Northern Africa, Western Asia, 
and Southern Europe, have been known 
to swarm in such thick clouds as to ex¬ 
clude the rays of the sun for many 
square miles. They are also said to 
have stopped the flow of rivers by 
swooping down into them and damming 
the currents with their dead bodies. 
But the cicada was never known to cel¬ 
ebrate in this way, although there are 
traditions to that effect. It is strictly 
an American insect, having been well 
known to the Indians long before the 
time of Columbus. The most serious 
depredations committed by the cicada 
are the hacking of the branches and 
the gnawing of the roots of trees. 
The former is done by the female, 
which plows the young bark while 
planting her eggs, and the latter by both 
sexes, during the underground stage. 
The cicada’s strange notion of living 
underground during the greater part 
of its life, and of afterward coming up 
to the surface to grow wings and die 
after only a few weeks, makes it one of 
the greatest curiosities of the lower 
animal kingdom. The seventeen and 
thirteen year individuals differ only in 
respect to the length of their under¬ 
ground periods. That the southerners 
mature much earlier than do the north¬ 
erners is undoubtedly due to climatic 
differences. On observing a swarm of 
cicadas one will notice that half of 
them are about two-thirds as large as 
the remainder. This difference in size 
has caused the mistaken supposition of 
many people that the larger are the 
males and the smaller the females. 
They always live together, have com¬ 
mon habits, lay their eggs in the same 
trees, and eat the same food. There is 
another incorrect theory that the small 
ones are the youngsters of the brood, 
but in reality every cicada in a swarm 
is of the same age. 
