their wings with azure green
and purple glossed.
—anna l. barbauld.
something exciting was going on. ruth could not tell just what it was at first. she could only watch and wonder. then her eyes grew large and bright. surely some fairy’s wand had touched the old orchard, for suddenly it seemed alive with beetles—big beetles and little beetles; beetles in sober colourings, and beetles gleaming with all the tints of the rainbow. ruth had never dreamed that there could be so many of them or that they were so beautiful.
the gorgeously coloured, graceful tigers attracted her first, though she didn’t know their name.
“oh,” she cried, “how lovely!”
“and how strange,” added a voice just above her head, “how very strange, their children should be so homely.”
“what’s that?” asked one of the tigers, a metallic green fellow, with purple lights, and two pale yellow dots on the edge of each wing cover. “our children not so beautiful as we are, did you say? of course, they are not; a fat grub couldn’t be, you know. but let me tell you, there are few things as smart as a tiger beetle baby. i say,” he added, looking full at ruth, “have you ever seen the hole he digs? it is often a foot deep, while he is less than an inch long. he has only his jaws and fore legs to work with too. yet he piles the earth on his flat head as if it were the easiest thing in the world, and then, climbing to the top, he throws it off, and is ready for another load.”
120“i suppose he digs a hole to catch things,” said ruth, “like the ant lion, and does he stay at the bottom and——”
“no, he doesn’t stay at the bottom. he watches near the top of his hole for his dinner, hanging on by a pair of hooks which grow out of a hump on his back. he always goes to the bottom to eat his dinner, though; he seems to like privacy. yes, we are a fierce family from the beginning, for we grown tigers can catch our prey either running or flying, and we usually manage to get it, too. but, then, farmers need not complain of us, for we never eat plants, and that is more than can be said of many here.”
“such taste,” said a cloaked, knotty horn, holding herself in a position that showed off her changeable blue and green dress, and her short yellow cape.
but the tiger did not answer. he was off after his dinner. several tree borers, however, nodded their heads in agreement.
“i believe in a vegetable diet myself,” 121said mrs. sawyer, who wore as usual her dress of brown and gray. “it is just such people as the tigers who make things like that necessary in a respectable meeting,” and as she spoke she waved her very long antennæ toward a big sign which read:
“the audience are requested not to eat each other during the meeting”
“i am glad to say i am not one of that kind. i wonder if any one of you know why the members of our family are called sawyers. perhaps i had better tell you: it is because our children saw into the trunks of evergreen trees, and sometimes they make holes large enough to kill the trees. smart, isn’t it, for a baby?”
“but it doesn’t seem to be very nice,” began ruth. then she stopped, for mrs. sawyer was looking at her and the borers were nodding their heads again.
“our children do not saw,” said the borers, “but they do bore, and it is pretty much the same thing for the tree.”
“my friends,” broke in a very solemn voice.
every beetle stopped talking, and ruth jumped to her feet, then flopped down on the grass again, waiting for what was coming.
the speaker, a large, clean-looking beetle, had just flown to a twig in the very middle of the meeting. he was black in colour, well sprinkled above and below with pale straw yellow in dots and points, but the queer thing about him was the two oval velvety black spots, each with a narrow line of straw colour around it, on his thorax. they were like great eyes, and made him look very wise.
“he is the eyed-elater,” whispered mrs. sawyer to ruth. “there he is speaking again.”
“my friends,” the big beetle was saying in tones as solemn, as before, “the important thing in any meeting is to keep to the main issue.”
“the main issue?” said the goldsmith beetle, a beautiful little creature with wing covers of golden yellow, and a body of metallic green covered with white, woolly fuzz. “what is the main issue?”
“dinner,” replied the tiger beetle, returning to his old place. “if it isn’t breakfast or supper.”
“no, my friend,” said the eyed-elater, with a grave glance, “the main issue is——”
then he stopped and fixed his two real eyes and the two spots which looked like eyes on some small beetles which were leaping in the air, turning somersaults, and making quite a noise.
“will you be still?” he said in his sternest voice.
“how foolish,” said mrs. sawyer, “to expect click beetles to be still!”
but ruth was all curiosity.
“i’ve seen you before,” she said, going closer and touching one of the funny little fellows.
suddenly it curled up its legs, dropped as if shot, then lay like one dead.
“here, here!” called the elater. “no 124more of that! we know all about your tricks!”
“all right,” said the would-be dead one, and he gave a click, popped into the air several inches, and came down on his back.
“that won’t do at all,” he said, and, clicking and popping once more, he came down on his feet.
“there,” he added, “you need to have patience with click beetles. you ought to know that, friend elater, for you are one of us.”
“well, i’m bigger, and not so foolish, and my children are not so harmful as yours. think of being a parent of those dreadful wire worms! that is what you click beetles are, and you know the farmer hasn’t a worse enemy. now we must get back to the main issue.”
“back?” said mrs. sawyer. “were we ever there to begin with? you can’t scare me,” she added, “no matter how hard you stare. you haven’t any more eyes than the 125rest of us. those two spots are not real eyes, and you know it.”
“the main issue,” repeated the elater in a very loud voice, “is, what makes us beetles?”
“that’s something i’d like to know,” said a handsome little beetle in a striped coat. “i’m a beetle, if there ever was one, yet i have a world-wide reputation as a bug.”
“pray don’t get excited, mrs. potato bug. it isn’t your time to talk yet. we are on the main issue, and i will answer my own question.”
ruth was glad some one would answer it, for at this rate it seemed they would never get anywhere.
“we are beetles for several reasons,” went on the elater. “in the first place, we belong to the order coleoptera.”
another tera, thought ruth.
“that name is taken from a language called greek, and means sheath wing. it is given to us because we have handsome outside wings which we use to cover our real flying wings. 126all beetles have them, though those of our cousin, mr. rove beetle, are quite short.”
“that’s a fact,” said a rove beetle, “and no one need think we have outgrown our coats. it is simply a fashion in our family to wear our sheath wings short. we can always fold our true wings under them, and i’d like to see the fellow who says we can’t.”
“well, you needn’t get so mad about it,” answered the elater in mild tones.
“and don’t curl your body up as if you were a wasp,” added mrs. sawyer. “everybody knows you can’t sting.”
“i don’t care,” said the rove beetle. “i hate to be misunderstood. we are useful too. i heard a man call us scavengers. i don’t know what it means, but something good, i am sure, from the way he said it. i must be going soon. it is so dry here. you know my home is in damp places under stones or leaves.”
“you may go when you wish,” answered the elater. “we are still on the main issue. 127as i said before, we are beetles, and there is no reason to take us for bugs. calm yourself, mrs. potato bug. we have no sucking beak as the bugs have, but we have two sets of horny jaws, which move sideways, and not up and down. these are to bite roots, stems, and leaves of plants, so most of our order live on vegetable food and are enemies to the farmer, but some of us are his friends, for we eat the insects that injure his crops. our children are called grubs. some of them make a sort of glue, with which they stick together earth or bits of wood for a cocoon; others make tunnels in tree trunks or wood and transform in them. we may well be proud, for we belong to a large and beautiful order, and we are found in all parts of the world. we are divided into two sub-orders—true beetles and snout beetles. i hope our cousins, the snout beetles, will not be offended. they are real in a way.”
“the farmer and fruit grower think so anyway,” said a little weevil. “we have been called bugs just because we have a snout, but any one can see at a glance that it isn’t a bug’s snout. it is not a tube at all, but has tiny jaws at the tip.”
“i don’t believe i could see all that,” said ruth rather timidly, for these clever little people had a way of making her feel she knew very little.
“maybe you can’t,” was the short answer, “and i dare say you can’t tell how we use our snouts either. we punch holes with them in plums, peaches, cherries, and other fruits, not to mention nuts and the bark of trees. i am a peach curculio, but that is not important. we all work in the same way—that is, drop an egg in the hole made by our snout, then use the snout again to push the egg down. mrs. plum weevil is busy now in the plum orchard back of us; so of course she couldn’t come to this meeting. ‘duty before pleasure,’ she said. she will lay eggs in quite a number of plums, and the plums will drop from the trees before they are ripe.”
“and there’ll be a lump of gum on them!” cried ruth, clapping her hands.
the weevil looked at her with approval. “you do notice some things,” she said.
“the gum oozes out of the hole made by our snouts. of course our egg hatches inside the fruit, and the baby has its dinner all around it. as it hasn’t a leg to walk on——”
“dear! dear!” sighed the elater. “you seem to forget that we are trying to keep to the main issue. as i said before——”
“you are always saying what you said before,” snapped mrs. sawyer.
“now, they are beginning again,” thought ruth, but the elater paid no attention to mrs. sawyer.
“as i said before,” he repeated, “we have reason to be proud, for though we build no cities, like ants, wasps, and bees, and make no honey or wax, or have, in fact, any special trades, yet we are interesting and beautiful. the ancient egyptians thought some of us sacred and worshipped us.”
“there!” cried mrs. tumble bug, literally tumbling into their midst. “i couldn’t come at a better time.”
ruth gave a little scream of delight when she saw her, and mrs. tumble bug nodded with the air of an old friend.
as usual, her black dress looked neat and clean, though she and her husband had rolled and tumbled all over the road in their effort to get their ball to what they considered the best place for it. they had succeeded, and mrs. tumble bug’s shovel-shaped face wore a broad smile in consequence.
“i knew about this meeting,” she said, “but my husband and i agreed that duty should come before pleasure.”
“she heard me say that,” whispered the little peach weevil to her nearest neighbour.
“i didn’t,” answered mrs. tumble bug. “i have just come. we only found a safe place for our ball a little while ago.”
“that ball!” said mrs. sawyer in disgusted 131tones. “i should think you would be tired of it.”
“tired of our ball?” repeated mrs. tumble bug. “why, our ball is the most important thing in the world. this was a big one, too. we made it in farmer brown’s barnyard, and then i laid my eggs in it, and we rolled it all the way here. of course it grew on the road, and i couldn’t have moved it alone, but my mate helped me. he always helps. indeed it seems to me tumble bugs are the only husbands in the insect world who care about their children’s future.”
“now i know,” said ruth, who had been thinking very hard. “you think so much of your balls because they hold your eggs. i’ve often wondered about them.”
“of course that is the reason,” answered mrs. tumble bug; “and when our eggs hatch the babies will have a feast all around them.”
“ugh!” said ruth, and some flower beetles shook their little heads, and added:
“it would be better to starve than eat the stuff in that ball.”
“tastes differ,” said mrs. tumble bug, amiably; “but, speaking of sacred beetles, it was our family the egyptians worshipped. they could not understand why we were always rolling our ball, so they looked upon us as divine in some way, and made pictures of us in stone and precious gems. they can be seen to-day, i am told, but i do not care about that. i must make another ball,” and, nodding to her mate, they left the meeting together.
“now we’ll adjourn for dinner,” announced the elater, much to the disgust of mrs. potato bug, who was just getting ready to speak.
“dinner is well enough,” she said, “but how is one to enjoy it when one must stop in a little while?”
“you needn’t stop,” answered the elater. “stay with your dinner. we are not so anxious to hear you talk.”
“but i mean to talk, and i will,” and mrs. potato bug was off to the potato field, intending, as she said, to take a light lunch, and be back when the meeting opened.
but potato bugs propose, and farmers dispose, and——
