Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 June 1901 — Seventeen Year Locusts Coming, [ARTICLE]

Seventeen Year Locusts Coming,

According to State Geologist Blatchley the 17 year locusts, or more properly cicadas, are due in Indiana again next year. The “brood” that is due then covers pretty*** nearly the whole state, he says, except the northwest corner, and perhaps that will let Jasper county out. The last time the brood hatched was in 1885, and if our recollection serves us right, there were not many in this section at that time. Mr. Blatchley thus discourses about these interesting insects, as quoted by the Indianapolis Journal. “Indiana is going to have a host - of unpleasant guests next summer, and, although their visit will only last about two or three weeks, they will commit enough depredations in that brief time to make the people of this State wish they had never heard of such visitors. These guests that I refer to belong to a huge family known as the cicada septemdecem cr 17 locust. Their last visit was in the forepart of June, 1885, and I have an idea that anybody who owned a fruit orchard at that time can recall that visit with perfect distinctness. The locusts that will be seen on trees next summer come from eggs deposited on twigs of young trees or on young twigs of old trees sixteen years ago. The eggs were deposited by means of what is technically known as ovipositor. This is a little tube provided with saw-teeth which are used to make slits in the twigs. When a slit is made the eggs are deposited, not a haphazard, but in rows as neatly a£ hen’s eggs are arranged in modern paoking-cases. Whenever a twig has been punctured in this manner it dies and falls to the ground. As soon as the twig reaohes the ground the eggs begin to hatch and than the locusts or larvae at once seek the earth, in which they burrow and remain until the period of seventeen years has elapsed, when they emerge. The insect at the time it emerges is called a pupa. It is not equipped with wings, but crawls to as high a point as it can, on a fence, the side of a bam or a tree, where it remains several days. The heat of the sun dries the pupa until its .exterior covering or shell breaks open and permits the full grown locust to emerge. This is the visitor against whose coming owners of fruit trees or orchards had better begin to make preparations next spring. The fullgrown locust lives only about three or four weeks, never longer than forty days, but in that makes the puncture that I have described and deposits its eggs.