run, passing north of Cheshire in Gallia county and moving
on to Scioto county. There is a curiosity about the line of the
two districts that they continued nearly straight without re-
gard to the crooked Ohio river. They made their first ap-
pearance from the 15th to the 20th of May, according to
warmth or coolness of the season, and remained about forty-
five days before they all disappeared. The males belong to
the "drum corps," while the female pierces the small twigs
and limbs of trees and deposits her eggs. These in due time
fall upon the earth, where they remain for another period of
seventeen years, to mature their growth for a few days' work
in the sunshine, which seems necessary to continue the ex-
istence of their species.
These cicada were destructive to young orchards as well as
other green and growing shrubs. A gentleman in Lebanon
township had an orchard of choice variety of apples, and hear-
ing of these "seventeen-year locusts" just coming into notice,
turned his flock of a hundred geese into his orchard who, de-
vouring the pests as they came up from the ground, protected
and preserved his fruit trees from any damage.
When the first settlers came to Ohio they found great num-
bers of wild turkeys, a large bird seen in flocks in the woods,
but harmless in every way. In the fall of the year men of the
settlement caught them in pens built of rails from a fence near
by, and generally placed on a side hill, and were about three
feet high, and covered with rails. Then a low place dug at
the lower side of the pen, and extending under, just large
enough for a turkey to enter, would be strewed with a little
shelled corn, leading into the pen where more corn would be
scattered inside. The turkey eating followed the trail into
the pen, and one after another all would go in. When they
wanted to go out, their heads would be up, never looking
down at the entrance hole. A man with a club would go in,
even where the turkeys did, and kill all, or as many as he
