Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1888-07-19
THE LOCUSTS.
Interesting History OF the Seventeen.
year Cicada.

In many localities throughout the
West the woods are now ringing with
the music of the seventeen-year insects
and curiosity is alive to know something
of their natural history. The true
locusts are voracious and destructive
insects, with ample powers of flight to
enable them to migrate from one part
of the country TO another for more
fresh repast in their course of devas-
tation. The Bible tells of their ravages.
Our grasshoppers belong to the same
order of insects that the true locusts do.
The superstitious dread with which
many people regard the appearance of
seventeen-year cicada--the true name
is caused mostly by our giving them
the name of locust which belong
to an entirely distinct order of insects.
The writer of this well recollects the
appearance of the cicada in 1854, and
recollects also of then talking with those
who saw them here in 1887 and learning
the habits of the insect from them.
True to the predictions, the same insect
was here again in 1871, and now returns
in 1888. Their home for the seventeen
years has been in the ground, where
they feed on the roots of plants and
trees. Ten years ago they were about
fifteen inches below the surface and
were then whitish grub about one
inch in length. Every year since they
have been found just little nearer the
surface and of a darker color. They
now crawl from the ground and up some
shrub, tree or fence; the skin of the back
splits open which is the opening of their
wing cases, and it is entirely without
masticatory or eating organs, and of
course can eat nothing for the little
while that it stays above the ground.
The female cicada selects the end twig
of tree, makes slit endwise in the
bark in which she deposits a row of
eggs, and when Matched, fall to the
ground where they bury themselves for
their day of seventeen years, and the
people of 1SSS-look at those eights-
will be curious, as we are, to know
from whence they came and whittier
they go. The whitening of the twig in
which the eggs are laid is the only
disaster that attends their appearance.
The frame work of their wings has a
to the letter w, which the
used to think stood for
war, and regarded their appearance as
a prediction of war. The prediction
has generally been true, just as we al
ways have some kind of weather after
the moon changes.
The cicada do not all appear in every
part of the country the same year. In
one section east of the Alleghenies in
Pennsylvania, they appeared in 1884,
1851, and 1868. In another section
west of Laurel Hill they appeared in
1849 and 1866. while in the region be-
tween they have never been seen.
Their period of open air existence is
about forty-two days. Reports about
the sting of locusts killing people are
always ripe during the cicada season,
but scientific men have often followed
up these reports and always found them
without any reliable authority. A fatal
effect from the sting of any large insect
at such times would naturally be charged
to the misnamed locusts, for it is the
of this insect in the United
States that causes the fear of them.
Thus there's something in name. The
male cicada is the only musician with
them, the female being perfectly silent,
much unlike human folks. The noise
is not made in the throat, but by little
violin which they carry on their backs
under their wings. 1t consists of two
whitish membranes, ridged like shell
over a cavity, one on each
side of the body. This music is their
love-song by which the male calls its
mate. As | write the woods are alive
with one continuous sound of this world
of cicada love, as gaily their troubadours
strike their guitars, singing;
From the dark ground
Hther come;
Lady love, lady love,
Welcome me home.
Chicago EUening Journal.