Excerpt from Robert Cushman Murphy's Journal, May 1957,
on Return of the Seventeen Year Locusts
'Brood 14' of the seventeen-year locust is here again. In
Belle Terre the insects were first seen emerging from the ground on or
about May 23. I last saw them in the same area between June 9 and July
4, 1940.
Before that I saw them in the same approximate season of 1923,
when I could hear the yelling chorus in Belle Terre from our Crystal
Brook house. Unfortunately, I made no notes, but I still have three
specimens from that emergence. The one before that was in 1906, just
at the time I graduated from the Port Jefferson High School, and I well
recall seeing and hearing them on my frequent walks between Mt. Sinai
and 'Port.' (We rarely use the 'Jefferson.' It always pleased an
old salt like Clifford Ashley to hear us natives speak of 'going to Port.')
The next earliest appearance of the cicada Brood 14 would have been
in 1881, when I was two years old. We were probably on Long
Island, at Good Ground (now Hampton Bays), but I can't very well
swear that I noted the insects then! Nevertheless 1906, 1923, l940, 1957-
that makes four personal observations. Next time will be in L974, when,
as, and if I am 84 years old. Here's hoping!
I don't know which brood of the cicadas the Pilgrims at Plymouth,
Massachusetts, first encountered in 1633...[more historical reflections
as well as article clippings follow]
[Continued in downloadable document below...]