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it, I should like to receive from you all the facts respecting this insect, which are
within your knowledge, and particularly any which are not mentioned fully in Dr. Harris's
Treatise. None of these insects ever come out in my neighborhood, and I consequently know little about them from personal observation. By digging along the roots of trees
the twigs of which were much infested last time, you can doubtless now find the young
larvae. If you should do so, please send me 3 or 4 specimens in a quill, for my cabinet
and that of the State Agric. Society. And if you can find the worm readily [underlined], it would be
well to keep an eye upon it, year after year, and notice its increase in size, the depth
at which it resides at different time, &c. you would, doubtless, thus find out much that
is interesting, and when it appears again, you would be able to give a full and complete
history of this world-famous species - such a history as will connect your name with
it in all coming time.
The first notice we have of this insect - that of Rev. A. Sandel, Philadelphia, 1715 -
says, "They issued from the earth everywhere, even on the hard roads." And a gentleman,
west, told me he had noticed their holes and empty shells in the middle of a beaten road.
But, unless there are roots of trees running under the road, it is difficult to conceive what
the larvae could find to subsist upon in such a situation. And if, where the larvae now
are, the land should be cleared of its timber, so that the roots all perish,-would the larvae
die? or make their way through the ground to other situations? Do you know if any
insects emerged in spots where the timber had been cleared off one, two, or more years
ago?
It is truly wonderful, that in so many years, some individuals, happening where they
have an abundance of nourishment, do not get their growth and come out a year sooner
- or that others are not started, so as to be a year later in appearing. Watch closely
next June, and see if you cannot find here and there a scattering individual.
If you saved any spare specimens, I should be glad to receive them, to see if they
do not vary in some minute particular from the Hudson river brood of 1843 or the Penn-