Jasper County Democrat, Volume 5, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1902 — THE 17-YEAR LOCUSTS [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE 17-YEAR LOCUSTS

THEY ARE DUE TO APPEAR AGAIN THIS YEAR. Warnings Being Sent to Agriculturists—Weird and Interesting InsectsBuried in the Earth Seventeen Years —Only a Few Days Above Ground. One of the greatest pests to which the Agriculturalists of this country are subjected is occasioned by the insects known as locusts. Every year certain types of these winged creatures make their appearance, but they are always the worst during the period marked by the advent of the 17-year locusts, the last visitation of which was in 1885. Hence they are due again this year. Warnings are being sent out by the State commissioners of agriculture all over the northern and eastern parts of the United States. Rene Bache writes very interestingly of this little insect in the Philadelphia Times. He says:, This locust is the wierdest and in some respects the most interesting of all insects. No other known insect lives for anything like so long a time, and surely nothing can be more strange than a habit which requires an anipial to spend so extended a period in solitude in a subterranean cell, the whole of the open-air career of the 17year cicada, as it is properly called, comprising only a few days. Filling the ground from which they issue with countless exit holes, swarming over trees and shru'is. and making the air vibrate with their shrill, discordant notes, the locusts leave obvious marks of their presence in the small wounds, made for the purpose of depositing eggs, which cover all the smaller twigs and branches. Though no serious harm is done forest trees, fruit trees and young nursery stock are liable to suffer considerably.

Live* Seventeen Year* Underground. The young ant-like larvae hatched from the eggs escape from the wounded limbs, drop lightly to the ground, and quickly burrow out of sight, each one forming for itself a little subterranean chamber over some rootlet, where it remains winter and summer, buried and solitary, in this manner passing the seventeen year* of its underground existence, while preparing for a few weeks only of the society of its fellows and the enjoyment of the sunshine and fragrant air of early summer. With perfect regularity, at the end of the allotted period, millions on millions of the insects attain maturity at almost the same moment. For four or five weeks the winged male sings his song of love

and courtship, and the female busies herself with the placing of the eggs which are to produce a fresh generation seventeen years later. For nearly two centuries there is a record of the recurrence of the eicoda at 17-ycar intervals, the first written notes on the subject having been made in 1715. Some of these insects measure more than six inches in expanse of wings. They are absolutely harmless, so far as causing physical injury is concerned, being unable to defend themselves against au ant or a fly. They are also quite beautiful in appearance. When the spring of the appointed year arrives, the locusts emerge from the ground with a rush, as it were, and climb upon every available tree or other elevation. They are in such vast numbers Maiotimes that one cannot step on the ground anywhere without crushing several as they come out of their holes.

ON THE ROAD TO THE TRANSPORT.