practicable. I am inclined to believe that nothing will prove so effectual as thorough irrigation, or copious and frequent showers of rain, which will bring forward the plants with such rapidity, that they will soon become so strong and vigorous as to withstand the attacks of these little bugs. The great increase of these and other noxious insects may fairly be attributed to the exterminating war which has wantonly been waged upon our insect-eating birds, and we may expect the evil to increase unless these little friends of the farmer are protected, or left undisturbed to multiply, and follow their natural habits. Meanwhile, some advantage may be derived from encouraging the breed of our domestic fowls. A flock of young chickens or turkeys, if suffered to go at large in a garden, while the mother is confined within their sight and hearing, under a suitable crate or cage, will devour great numbers of destructive insects; and our farmers should be urged to pay more attention than heretofore to the rearing of chickens, young turkeys, and ducks, with a view to the benefits to be derived from their destruction of insects.

II. HARVEST-FLIES, &c. (Hemiptera Homoptera.)

By many entomologists this division is raised to the rank of a separate order, under the name of HOMOPTERA; but the insects arranged in it are, as already stated, much more like the true HEMIPTERA, or bugs, than they are to the insects in any other order, which shows the propriety of keeping these two divisions together, and that separately they hold only a subordinate importance compared with other orders.

The insects belonging to this division are divided by naturalists into three large groups, or tribes.

1. Harvest-flies, or Cicadians (CICADADE); having short antennæ, which are awl-shaped or tipped with a little bristle; wings and wing-covers, in both sexes, inclined at the sides of the body; three joints to their feet; firm and hard skins; and in which the females have a piercer, lodged in a furrow beneath the extremity of the body.

2. Plant-lice (APHIDIDE); having antennæ longer than the head, and threadlike or tapering from the root to the end; wing-covers

and wings frequently wanting in the females; feet two-jointed; the body very soft, generally furnished with two little tubercles at the end; no piercer in the females.

3. Bark-lice (COCCIDE); having threadlike or tapering antennæ, longer than the head; the males alone provided with wings, which lie horizontally on the top of the back; no beak in this sex; females wingless, but furnished with beaks; the feet with only one joint, terminated by a single claw; skins tolerably firm and hard; two slender threads at the extremity of the body; no piercer in the females.

I. HARVEST-FLIES. (Cicadada.)

The most remarkable insects in this group are those to which naturalists now apply the name of Cicada. They are readily distinguished by their broad heads, the large and very convex eyes on each side, and the three eyelets on the crown; by the transparent and veined wing-covers and wings; and by the elevation on the back part of the thorax in the form of the letter X. The males have a peculiar organization which enables them to emit an excessively loud buzzing kind of sound, which, in some species, may be heard at the distance of a mile; and the females are furnished with a curiously contrived piercer, for perforating the limbs of trees, in which they place their eggs. Without attempting a detailed description of the complicated mechanism of these parts, which could only be made intelligible by means of figures, I shall merely give a brief and general account of them, which may suffice for the present occasion. The musical instruments of the male consist of a pair of kettle-drums, one on each side of the body, and these, in the seventeen-year Cicada (or locust as it is generally but improperly called in America), are plainly to be seen just behind the wings. These drums are formed of convex pieces of parchment, covered with numerous fine plaits, and, in the species above named, are lodged in cavities on the sides of the body behind the thorax. They are not played upon with sticks, but by muscles or cords fastened to the inside of the drums. When these muscles contract and relax, which they do with great rapidity, the drum-heads are alternately tightened and loosened, recovering their natural convexity by their

own elasticity. The effect of this rapid alternate tension and relaxation is the production of a rattling sound, like that caused by a succession of quick pressures upon a slightly convex and elastic piece of tin plate. Certain cavities within the body of the insect, which may be seen on raising two large valves beneath the belly, and which are separated from each other by thin partitions having the transparency and brilliancy of mica or of thin and highly polished glass, tend to increase the vibrations of the sounds, and add greatly to their intensity. In most of our species of Cicada, the drums are not visible on the outside of the body, but are covered by convex triangular pieces on each side of the first ring behind the thorax, which must be cut away in order to expose them. On raising the large valves of the belly, however, there is seen, close to each side of the body, a little opening, like a pocket, in which the drum is lodged, and from which the sound issues when the insect opens the valves. The binder extremity of the body of the female is conical, and the under-side has a longitudinal channel for the reception of the piercer, which is furthermore protected by four short grooved pieces fixed in the sides of the channel. The piercer itself consists of three parts in close contact with each other; namely, two outer ones grooved on the inside and enlarged at the tips, which externally are beset with small teeth like a saw, and a central, spear-pointed borer, which plays between the other two. Thus this instrument has the power and does the work both of an awl and of a doubleedged saw, or rather of two key-hole saws cutting opposite to each other. No species of Cicada possesses the power of leaping. The legs are rather short, and the anterior thighs are armed beneath with two stout spines.

The duration of life in winged insects is comparatively very short, seldom exceeding two or three weeks in extent, and in many is limited to the same number of days or hours. To increase and multiply is their principal business in this period of their existence, if not the only one, and the natural term of their life ends when this is accomplished. In their previous states, however, they often pass a much longer time, the length of which depends, in great measure, upon the nature and abundance of their food. Thus maggots, which subsist upon decaying animal or

vegetable matter, come more quickly to their growth than caterpillars and other insects which devour living plants; the former are appointed to remove an offensive nuisance, and do their work quickly; the latter have a longer time assigned to them, corresponding in some degree to the progress or continuance of vegetation. The facilities afforded for obtaining food influence the duration of life; hence those grubs that live in the solid trunks of perennial trees, which they are obliged to perforate in order to obtain nourishment, are longer lived than those that devour the tender parts of leaves and fruits, which, though they last only for a season, require no laborious efforts to be prepared for food. The harvest-flies continue only a few weeks after their final transformation, and their only nourishment consists of vegetable juices, which they obtain by piercing the bark and leaves of plants with their beaks; and during this period they lay their eggs, and then perish. They are, however, amply compensated for the shortness of their life in the winged state by the length of their previous existence, during which they are wingless and grub-like in form, and live under ground, where they obtain their food only by much labor in perforating the soil among the roots of plants, the juices of which they imbibe by suction. To meet the difficulties of their situation and the precarious supply of their food, for which they have to grope in the dark in their subterranean retreats, a remarkable longevity is assigned to them; and one species has obtained the name of Cicada septendecim, on account of its life being protracted to the period of seventeen years.

This insect has been observed in the southeastern parts of Massachusetts, but does not seem to have extended to other parts of the State. The earliest account that we have of it is contained in Morton's "Memorial," wherein it is stated that "there was a numerous company of flies, which were like for bigness unto wasps or bumblebees," which appeared in Plymouth in the Spring of 1633. "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 the woods ring of them, and ready to deafen the hearers." Judge Davis, in the Appendix to his edition of Secretary Morton's "Memorial," states that these insects appeared in Plymouth, Sandwich, and Falmouth in the year 1804; but, if

the exact period of seventeen years was observed, they should have returned in 1803. Circumstances may occasionally retard or accelerate their progress to maturity, but the usual interval is certainly seventeen years, according to the observations and testimony of many persons of undoubted veracity. Their occurrence in large swarms at long intervals, like that of the migratory locusts of the east, probably suggested the name of locusts, which has commonly been applied to them in this country. The following extract from a letter from the late Rev. Ezra Shaw Goodwin, of Sandwich, contains some interesting particulars which this gentleman had the kindness to communicate to me.

"I have not been unmindful of what you said to me respecting the locust insects, nor of the promise I made you with respect to them. They appeared in this town in the year 1821, in the middle of June. Their last previous appearance was in 1804, and their last, previous to that, was in 1787. I ascertained these periods from the statements of individuals, who remembered that it was locust-year, when this or that event occurred; as, when this one was married, or that one's eldest son was born; events, the date of which the husband or the parent would not be very likely to forget. The remembrance of all, though fixed by different events, concurred in establishing the same years for the appearance of the locusts.

"I first took notice of them in 1821, on the 17th of June, from their noise. They appeared chiefly in the forests, or in thickets of forest-trees, principally oak. Their nearest distance from my dwelling cannot be far from a mile; yet, at a still hour, their music was distinctly heard there. On going to visit them, I found the oak-trees and bushes swarming with them in a winged state. They came up out of the ground a creeping insect. Very soon, after they had arrived on the surface of the earth, the skin, or rather the shell of the insect burst upon the back, and the winged insect came forth, leaving the skin or shell upon the earth, in a perfect form, and uninjured, saving at the rupture on the back; showing an entire withdrawing of the living animal, as much so as does the snake's skin after he has left it. Thus these skins

* Dated Oct. 19, 1832.