Cicadas
I used to chuckle at how ancient Romans were convinced they could discern the future in the entrails of animals and the flights of birds. And then I learned that modern Americans thought that cicadas arrived bearing a message.
Some modern Americans, anyway. People like Charles Fackler, a farmer in Lawrenceville, N.J. During the 1902 appearance of Brood X, Fackler strode into the newsroom of the Trenton Evening Times and placed a cicada on a desk.
He invited the bemused newsmen to examine the delicate tracery of the insect’s wings. Fackler had been around for the previous Brood X appearance, 17 years earlier. He’d noticed that back then, the periodical cicadas had a W on each wing, an obvious harbinger of war.
But this cicada was different. Wrote the paper: “This time there is an ‘N’ on the right wing in addition to the ‘W’ on the left, which is taken as being a sign of ‘no war.’ ”
I don’t know what kind of funky cicada Fackler had, but it was an outlier. Periodical cicadas have a “W” on both wings. Well, not “W’s” — cicadas don’t read or write English — but designs that look like W’s. The veins are slightly thicker and darker there.
“It’s very important to use your imagination,” said Donald C. Weber, a USDA research entomologist and co-author of a 2018 biography of Charles V. Riley, a 19th-century entomologist who studied cicadas.................
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/t...rried-a-dire-warning/ar-AAKzpdR?ocid=msedgntp
I used to chuckle at how ancient Romans were convinced they could discern the future in the entrails of animals and the flights of birds. And then I learned that modern Americans thought that cicadas arrived bearing a message.
Some modern Americans, anyway. People like Charles Fackler, a farmer in Lawrenceville, N.J. During the 1902 appearance of Brood X, Fackler strode into the newsroom of the Trenton Evening Times and placed a cicada on a desk.
He invited the bemused newsmen to examine the delicate tracery of the insect’s wings. Fackler had been around for the previous Brood X appearance, 17 years earlier. He’d noticed that back then, the periodical cicadas had a W on each wing, an obvious harbinger of war.
But this cicada was different. Wrote the paper: “This time there is an ‘N’ on the right wing in addition to the ‘W’ on the left, which is taken as being a sign of ‘no war.’ ”
I don’t know what kind of funky cicada Fackler had, but it was an outlier. Periodical cicadas have a “W” on both wings. Well, not “W’s” — cicadas don’t read or write English — but designs that look like W’s. The veins are slightly thicker and darker there.
“It’s very important to use your imagination,” said Donald C. Weber, a USDA research entomologist and co-author of a 2018 biography of Charles V. Riley, a 19th-century entomologist who studied cicadas.................
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/t...rried-a-dire-warning/ar-AAKzpdR?ocid=msedgntp