Over about twenty square miles of Long Island, with the Massapequa swamp as a center, the cicada in millions is doing its deadly work. The so-called seventeen-year locust is really not a locust at all. It is more properly called a 'harvest fly.' But its noise is kept up from daylight to dusk, auto drivers have to put up windshields to get through its flights, and all vegetable life is devastated by the pest.
The seventeen-year periodicity is not a mere tradition, but is backed by entomological science. The female lays eggs in tree branches. When hatched these fall to the ground, as the larva, and burrow. Underground the larva lives till in the course of years it becomes the pupa, an intermediate form. Then it digs to the surface, and soon appears as a full-formed cicada, with wings and an awful voice.
The cicada is called the longest-lived of all insects. There are broods visiting the Southern States which have a periodicity of thirteen years instead of seventeen. The eggs and larvae are fine food for toads, frogs, woodpeckers and the harmless snakes. But the most voracious enemy of the cicada is the common English sparrow.
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