Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 117, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 May 1919 — 17-Year Locust Is Slowly Going [ARTICLE]

17-Year Locust Is Slowly Going

Causes Leading to Disappearance Outlined by Department of Agriculture. TO BE EXTINCT IN TIME Circular Gives Succinct History of Insect and the Protective Means That Can Be Taken Against it. Washington.—Have you an ideal in the absolute In hopelessness? Well, let it be said that the house in which you live is comparatively new—built within the last 17 years. The ground on which it stands was originally woodland. In the summer of 1902 all the trees thereabouts were full of 17-year locusts. Eggs were deposIted in the branches, the larvae came out, dropped lightly to the ground, and dug in. The long period of subterranean existence is almost ended. In May the Insects will start toward the light and'air —and Will come in contact with the concrete floor of your cellar ! There may be another situation as hopeless, but certainly none more so. That clearing up of woodland for the building of houses and for cultivation is the principal agency that is making the 17-year locust, name is the periodical cicada, a vanishing species. Dr. Gideon B. Smith, one of the earlier scientific observers, allowed rather a melancholy note to creep into his Invaluable manuscript when he wrote that future generations, if they read his writings at all, would shake their heads and think of him as a romancer.

Being Slowly Exterminated. In the same note, also, C. L. Mariatt, one of the latest systematic observers, writes in his bulletin, “To the lover of nature there is something regrettable in this slow extermination of an Insect which presents, as does the periodical cicada, so much that is interesting and anomalous.” Thus, the present-day experts of the United States department of agriculture agree with the early observer that the time will come when there will be no periodical cicadas left. That time, however, is a long way off. There will be multiplied millions of them this year and in other years to come. For many persons the cicada will be as. new a sight as it was to the first observers w’hen they came from Europe to the American forests. Modern writing on the subject is done, of course, in the light of all the observations ‘that have been made through more than 200 years. They lack the freshness of the writings of men who saw the cicada before a literature of the Insect had been built up. Those early writings, therefore, possess an unusual interest. In 1669 Nathaniel Moreton, who lived at Cambridge, Mass., wrote “New

England's Memorial.” In it he told of “a kind of a pestilent fever” that had prevailed _in 1633 and “carried off many of the whites and Indians in and near Plymouth.” “It is to be observed," he says, “that the spring before there was a numerous company of flies, which were like for bigness unto wasps or bumble-bees, 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 all the woods ring of them and ready to deaf the hearers.” The old gentleman is to be excused for believing that the cicadas “did eat

up the green things.” The appearance of the dead and withered branches doubtless was such as to justify such a conclusion. One “T. M.,” supposed to be Thomas Matthews, son of Samuel Matthews, governor of Virginia, who observed the cicadas in 1675, fell Into the same error. For nearly 300 years, then, the written record of the cicada has been piling up, undergoing corrections now and then, receiving new discoveries from time to time. As nearly as can be judged it is complete now. The latest addition is a circular, “The Sev-enteen-Year Locust In 1919,” by Dixon Merritt of the ofllce of information. United States department of agriculture. It does not pretend to present new facts, but it gives a succinct history of the cicada and the protective means that can be taken against it The circular will be available to interested persons in the 21 states where the periodical cicada will appear this year.- ■ '