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gardens is a descendant of the scarabæus, but it cleans up the paths, and works hard for its living without ever seeming

to think of its sacred ancestors.

The tumblebug's ball is its greatest treasure, for in the center of it is a little egg. Both of the beetles are very careful of it; they roll it to a place of safety, dig a deep hole, and and bury bury it in the ground. The poor parents cannot count the number of tumbles they get as they roll over the ball or as it rolls over them, before they find a place which suits them for a nest.

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SACRED SCARAB

When the young beetle comes out, it is a little grub, which does not look like its father or mother; but it changes to a black, glossy beetle. The June bug, the firefly, the horsefly, and the

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Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home,

Your house is on fire, your children will burn,"

are all beetles, and there are many more.

They grow from eggs to wingless grubs, which live underground or in the bark of trees, feeding on roots and insects until they become full-grown beetles, with horny shields over their thin, gauzy wings. Some of them are grubs for only a short time, while others remain for years underground before changing.

The tumblebugs are very plain in their tastes, dressing always in black, but some beetles are gay with crimson, blue, and orange, and shine as brightly by day in the sunshine as the fire

flies do at night. The great black

SCARABEUS

plunger beetle is the lord over all water insects. His feet are flattened like oars, so that he can swim or row himself around

TUMBLEBUG

in his excursions; but he can also live on land or in the air.

He wears a strong suit of armor and carries

his weapons in his terrible jaws and on the ends of his first and second pairs of legs. An unlucky insect, once in his grasp, has no chance at all. Even as a larva he had bad habits, for though only a soft-bodied grub, he sucked the juices of snails and other creatures with his ferocious, sickle-shaped jaws, that are hollow from end to end.

But there are good beetles and bad beetles. While some of them do much harm in the farmers' grainfields, vegetable gardens and orchards, there are others which purify the air we breathe, by eating up and burying decayed matter.

GREEN DRAKE AND GRAY DRAKE

A MAY FLY STORY

GREEN DRAKE lives two or three years.

Gray Drake lives but a day or two.

Green Drake lives in the water; Gray Drake lives in the air; and yet, while they are such different-looking creatures, they were really born from the same egg.

Their mother was a May fly, whose eggs were laid in the leaves of some plants which grew in the water world.

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When the eggs hatched, some queer, small grubs, which the fishermen call drakes, were born. They did not look at all like their pretty mother. There was not a wing to be seen in

the whole family of grubs, nor were there any long tails.

Green Drake and his brothers and sisters wanted to be handsome May flies. As they didn't know how to do it, they contented themselves with swimming around in their watery home, playing tag and other games with minnows, tadpoles, dragon fly and mosquito grubs.

They were afraid of the dragon fly babies with their long, baglike masks and cruel pincers; but they used their own sharp jaws on smaller grubs and insects, when it was breakfast, dinner or supper time.

They wore out several suits of clothes, and one day when Green Drake moulted, he found himself what he had always longed to be, a straw-colored May fly, with four beautiful gauzy wings and two long, straight, tapering tails.

He was now what the fisherman, who had christened him Green Drake, called a Gray Drake. He flew around in the bright May sunshine, and darted over the pond which had

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