Great JOHN HAMDEN, Esq.,
Of St. James's, Westminster."
In the following number (dated 11th September, 1851), the editor offers an apology for having omitted the date of the decease of Mrs. Mattocks, viz. 1778; and then remarks that—
"As she was twenty-seven years old at her death, she must have been born in 1751; it was therefore impossible that she should have been the grand-daughter of the great John Hampden, that died in 1643, one hundred and eight years before her birth."
Query, Can any of your correspondents give me any information respecting the subject?
SALOPIAN.
306. Cicada or Tettigonia Septemdecim.
—In Latrobe's Rambler in North America, London, 1835, vol. ii. p. 290., is a curious account of this insect, which visits Pennsylvania every seventeenth year, and appears about May 24. It is under an inch in length when it first appears early in the morning, and gains its strength after the sun has risen. These insects live ten or fifteen days, and never seem to eat any food. They come in swarms, and birds, pigs, and poultry fatten on them. The female lays her eggs in the outermost twigs of the forest; these die and drop on the ground. The eggs give birth to a number of small grubs, which are thus enabled to attain the mould without injury, and in it they disappear; they are forgotten till seventeen years pass, and then the memory of them returns, and they rise from the earth, piercing their way through the matted sod, the hard trampled clay, &c. They appeared in 1749, &c., to 1834, and are expected in 1851. Has this expectation been fulfilled?