Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 39, Number 80, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 June 1907 — Seventeen Year Locusts. [ARTICLE]

Seventeen Year Locusts.

Monticello Democrat: There has been some comment over a notice sent out from the bureau of entomology that the seventeen year locusts were due again this year. This notice, however, does not apply to this part of Indiana, but to several southern states and over southern Illinois and a few counties in southwestern Indiana. John L. Moorman, who formerly lived in Carroll and White counties, stated in his paper, the Starke County Republican, last week that he had lived in this part of Indiana for more than 38 years and in that time he remembered of seeing the locusts only onCe. He says; “That was in 1884, and they came by the millions, so it seemed, and the woods were so full of the insects, singing or rather rasping

out a noise that sounded something like the word “Pha-ra-oh,” with the accent on the first syllable. The tree tops looked like swarmsof bees were passing thru and among them, and the old discarded shells of the locusts were to be found on fences and trees near the ground. As a result of the visit of those locusts many fruit and forest trees were damaged. The insect would choose a young branch and drive its stinger deep into the heart and there deposit its eggs. These branches decayed and fell to the ground. In due time larvae hatched and entered the earth where it changed its shape every year for seventeen years so the scientists say, until it comes out of the ground a seventeen-year locust again. But so tar as the writer remembers this swarm never reported for duty again.” Bro. Moorman is slightly mistaken in the year. It was 1885 instead of 1884; and probably the reason he did not see them on their reappearance in 1902 was that he had removed from the territoiy covered by this particular brood. The brood of locusts that infest White and Carroll counties and a portion of Cass and Clinton came first within the writer’s rememberance in 1868. Again in 1885 they appeared in diminished numbers; and in 1902 they were still fewer in number. Their peculiar droning sound, however, was familiar as in boyhood days. This brood is not due again in this vicinity until 1919; and owing to the rapid destruction of the forests it is probable that their numbers will be still fewer than on the occasion of their previous visit.