The Monitor., 1885-07-03
CICADAS.
Appearance OF the I7.Year Cfcadas.
Commonly called -.LOcusts.''
WHAT Pnop. LErpY SAYS OF THEM.

WHAT PRoF. LEIDY SAYS or THEM.
Placing one Of the insects in his hand as
fearlessly as if it were a fly. Doctor Leidy
told an interesting and instructive story oi
its life and habits.
'Do not make the very common error.
he began, of calling them locusts. for
they are not loeusts. but cicadas. All the
locusts in the world are nothing but grass
hoppers. and while grasshoppers will eat
every bit OF green they can get hold of. all
grass, SO they are not much to be feared
John the Baptist, when he was preach
ing in the wilderness, lived we are told. on
locusts and wild honey. That doesn t
mean that he fed on what are commonly
called locusts, but the meat was that of
grasshoppers, which the Digger Indians to
this day esteem luxury
Another popular error Doctor Leidy
went on to say, ''is that these cicadas do a
great deal of damage to trees. and only
recently heard learned professor in a
scientific lecture tell his audience of the
ravages of these animals ON the bark of a
tree which he had seen from the window
of a railroad car.
s'The seventeen-year cicadas subsist en-
tirely under the ground, on the juice which
they suck from the roots of trees. and are
as harmless as any animal that ever
breathed. | have never known a single
case of person having been stung by a
ccada. and it is all impossbility for them
to bite
Strange to say, these cicadas appear in
one part of the United States one year. y
said the professor, land i'll another part
the following summer; but seventeen years
always elapse between their visits to the
same place. Only last summer, when
there was not a vestige of them around
the city, saw large numbers in the neigh
borhood of Spring Lake, New Jersey.
While the cicadas are rather scarce here
now. the first warm sunshiny day we have
will bring them out in earnest. They
come out of the ground, leaving holes
large enough to admit your fingers. These
'chimneys' are often two feet in depth. and
the young cicadas ascend and descend in
them until they are nearly mature, when
they climb up tree and throw off their
larval shells.
'sThen the male insects fly around for
about fortnight. sounding their drums
as if to call the attention Of their mates be-
fore they disappear forever The crop
never last longer than two weeks Only
the male insects are possessed of organs of
sound perfectly developed. These are in
no way connected with the mouth or
throat. but may be described as white
sac nearly the size of a pea, under the body
This drum is operated by means of a
powerful muscular movement.
s'fhe female has saw-like appendage
with which she cuts around the thin
branch of tree. and in these creviees she
deposits her eggs. This twig. never more
than a foot long, is likely to wither and
drop to the ground and carry the eggs
with it. Soon after they are hatched the
young burrow to the juicy root of a tree,
and there remain until fully developed. a
term of seventeen years.
''In case the twig does not drop off, the
eggs remain in it until they are Matched,
and the young fall to the ground and take
the course have just spoken Of
II once called on an eminent Philade-
phia physician, now deceased, who, during
the visit, went to his fre-proof safe and
took from it the small end of the limb of q
tree. This, he told me, he had found one
season that the seventeen-year cicadas had
been here and it contained the eggs Of
of those insects. My friend entertained
the delusion that the eggs remained in a
quiescent state, and that, at the expiration
of seventeen years, the dead stick would
yield crop of cieadas.
On the transparent wing covers of each
eicada are veins which are the shape of the
letter s.W.'' This in olden times was con
strued as the OMNIBUS initial of the wort
''war, and the year in which the vista
tion of the seyenteen-year cicadas was ex
pected, Doctor Leidy said, in concluding
the conversation, was looked upon by
some in olden times as certain to bring ear
mage or some other evil with it: but tn,
prophesy was seldom if ever fulfilled
Golden Days.