Our Common Insects: A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and HousesPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
Our Common Insects: A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, Gardens and Houses
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
The Seventeen-year locust ranges from South-eastern and Western
Massachusetts to Louisiana. Of its distribution west of the Mississippi
Valley, we have no accurate knowledge. In Southern Massachusetts, they
appear in oak forests about the middle of June. After pairing, the
female, by means of her powerful ovipositor, bores a hole obliquely to
the pith, and lays therein from ten to twenty slender white eggs, which
are arranged in pairs, somewhat like the grains on an ear of wheat, and
implanted in the limb. She thus oviposits several times in a twig, and
passes from one to another, until she has laid four or five hundred
eggs. After this she soon dies. The eggs hatch in about two weeks,
though some observers state that they do not hatch for from forty to
over fifty days after being laid. The active grubs are provided with
three pairs of legs. After leaving the egg they fall to the ground,
burrow into it, and seek the roots of plants whose juices they suck by
means of their long beaks. They sometimes attack the roots of fruit
trees, such as the pear and apple. They live nearly seventeen years in
the larva state, and then in the spring change to the pupa, which
chiefly differs from the larva by having rudimentary wings. The damage
done by the larvae and pupae, then, consists in their sucking the sap from
the roots of forest, and occasionally fruit trees.
Regarding its appearance, Mr. L. B. Case writes us (June 15) from
Richmond, Indiana: "Just now we are having a tremendous quantity of
locusts in our forests and adjoining fields, and people are greatly
alarmed about them; some say they are Egyptian locusts, etc. This
morning they made a noise, in the woods about half a mile east of us,
very much like the continuous sound of frogs in the early spring, or
just before a storm at evening. It lasted from early in the morning
until evening." Mr. V. T. Chambers writes us that it is abounding in the
vicinity of Covington, Kentucky, "in common with a large portion of the
Western country." He points out some variations in color from those
described by Dr. Fitch, from New York, and states that those occurring
in Kentucky are smaller than those of which the measurements are given
by Dr. Fitch, and states that "these differences indicate that the
groups, appearing in different parts of the country at intervals of
seventeen years, are of different varieties." A careful comparison of
large numbers collected from different broods, in different localities,
and different years, would alone give the facts to decide this
interesting point. Mr. Riley has shown that in the Southern States a
variety appears every thirteen years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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