Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1919-05-09
17 YEAR LOCUSTS
 WILL REAPPEAR
 IN MAY THIS YEAR
Authorities Predict Return of 1000, 100000
 Insects.

The Mir. and Mrs. CicadaS are about to arrive on another visit. They will pay their respects to about every twig in Indiana, eastern Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, eastern Tennes- see, western North Carolina, and Northern Georgia. And the twigs won't be very happy to see them, for the periodical visits of this enormous family of "homopterous" bugs usual ly leave them completely "broke."
 The Cicadas may be dubbed the national bug, being American in birth, and ancestry as far back as anyone can trace them. They made their first recorded visit in 1715, when George Washington was planting cher ry trees down in old Virginia, but it was not until 1851 that Uncle Sam began to take note of them. Now we can predict almost to the day when they will appear, in what sections of the Country, how long they will stay, and what they will do while here.
 Pigs that IS pigs has nothing on Mir. and Mrs. Cicada when it comes | to preserving the species. They are the real Rooseveltians of bugland-l being numbered by the billions. In some wooded districts of their stay | they literally carpet the earth with ! their remains. Incidentally, they are the noisiest family in the world, and the queerest. They spend seventeen years in dark little cells underground, just getting ready for one brief fling 1 at lite and love. But when they do
 
 That is, the males do. The lady Ci- cadas are nice, quiet, earnest little l wives, who never have moment to spare from their maternal duties. When they have laid their 400 to 600 eggs and housed them snugly in all the green twigs within their reach,
 they are so plumb done out,' as the women say, they have no energy left to do anything but drop dead-which they do.
 Uncle Sam doesn't know much about the underground lives of these "seventeen-year loocusts s"-he knows | only that in 1902 about one thousand billion of them moved into subter- ranean quarters, and that some nice warm evening the latter part of May ] 1919, the same one thousand billion will move out again for few weeks 1 of mating and egg-laying in forest field, and orchard. During the inter vening years each cicada has molted 1 three or four. times, getting bigger shell at each melting, and stronger forelegs with which to enlarge it's cell. In the latter job, it tore away l the dirt ill front with it's claw-equipl ped forelegs, rolled the debris into lit tie pellets, tossed these on top of it's head, and then, rising up, pressed them firmly into the top of it's cave. When it's quarters were again com fortably spacious, it cleaned off it's forelegs, much as cat cleans her paws, by rubbing them over it's hairy 1 head. Then Mir. Cicada settled down on the rootlet over which his house is always built, for long, long swig l of sap. If the sustaining root went dry, or otherwise failed him, he bur rowed along, digging out the dirt ahead and pressing it back with his middle and hind legs, until he struck another juicy little root. But if all has gone we'll in the first cave, he has abided there in solitude neveh making 1 a squeak or sign, until now the sev- enteen years are up and he has reach | ed full-grown bughood..
 As the Spring sunshine begins to heat up this earthly dwelling, he and all his billions of brothers, sisters, and cousins will stretch themselves, shake a leg or two and begin bur rowing for daylight. If one of them makes mistake on the date coming out of his hole in March or April, he will know it the minute he sticks his head abouc the ground, and either hastily throw up a little turret of dirt around himself or seattle under com venient log to await the big night.
 Then, between sundown and mid night, he and his trillion relatives will begin to emerge from the soil in a rush. leaving their trillion holes be- hind them, and make bee-line for the