Rensselaer Republican, Volume 17, Number 38, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1885 — More About the Locust Plague. [ARTICLE]

More About the Locust Plague.

Our exchanges continue to unnecessarily frighten their readers, by allusions to the expected “LocuSt Plague” of this year. The truth about the matter- is, that the so called seventeen year and thirteen year locusts, are not loctsts at-all, in the true sense. The migrating grass-hoppers are the real locusts of this continent, and are the insects-which most closely resemble the locusts of biblical regions. Cicada is the proper name of the insects which are expected to appear in such enormous swarms, this year, and which are already beginning to make the! appearance, in some localities. , The worst thing about them is their ominously suggestive popular name, passed the summer of 1868 in a portion of Illinois where the seventeen year- locusts were so thick in the woods that they seemed almost as numerous as as the leaves of the forest; and the united sound of their millions of voices could be heard for more than a mFle. They did but little damage, however, beyond killing an an occasional young fruit tree, perhaps, although from their habit of so nearly cutting off the twigs of trees, in the process of egg laying, that the twigs would droop, and the leaves upon them wither, they made the woods look as though most of the trees-were dying; although they were not really injured.