roost
in the forests, they could be knocked down with poles and stones; and
thousands and thousands of them were thus obtained by the men and boys,
and very good eating they were.

There was a summer in which the settlers were very much astonished by
the advent of a vast army of invaders to which they were not at all
accustomed. These were locusts, probably of the kind we now call
seventeen-year locusts; and the people were amazed to see these
creatures come up out of the ground, clad in their horny coats of mail,
which they afterwards cast off, when they appeared as winged creatures.

They could not understand how insects encumbered by such hard, unwieldy
shells, could penetrate to such distance below the surface of the earth;
for they did not know that each one of these locusts came from a little
worm which had dropped into the ground many years before, and which had
worked its way down to a great depth, and then, about a sixth of a
century afterward, had reappeared on the surface as a hard-shell locust,
ready to split its back, get out of its shell, spend a few days flying
about in the summer air, lay its eggs in the twigs of trees, and then,
having fulfilled all its duties on this earth, to die.

Although the farmers probably supposed that their crops would be eaten
up by this vast horde of locusts, no great injury was done to them; for,
as we now know, the seventeen-year locusts do not appear upon earth to
destroy crops and vegetation, being far different from the
grasshopper-like locusts which in our Western countries sometimes
devastate large sections of farming lands. The twigs of the trees, which
had been punctured in order that the eggs might be deposited, recovered
their life, and put forth their leaves again when they had ceased to act
as insect incubators.

THE STORY OF A GIRL AND A HOGSHEAD.

Settlers came to New Jersey in various ways. Their voyages were
generally very long, and it often happened that they did not settle at
the place for which they had started, for there were many circumstances
which might induce them to change their mind after they reached this
country.

But there was one settler, and a very valuable one too, who came to New
Jersey in an entirely original and novel fashion. She was a girl only
sixteen years old, and a Swede. There is no reason to suppose that she
wanted to come to America; but circumstances made it necessary that she
should get out of Sweden, and this cou