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THE CHILDREN'S ROOM
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NEW YORK, N.Y. 10019
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THE AMERICAN BOYS' BOOK
OF BUGS, BUTTERFLIES
AND BEETLES
The Trail Blazers Series
Boys of all ages from twelve to ninety are setting the
seal of their approval upon these volumes. In addition
to being stories of breathless adventure, each book
pictures certain phases of American history which are
not very well known. This background of history gives
added pleasure and profit in the reading.
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J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PUBLISHERS PHILADELPHIA
THE AMERICAN BOYS'
BOOK OF BUGS,
BUTTERFLIES AND
BEETLES
DAN BEARD
FOUNDER OF THE FIRST BOY SCOUTS SOCIETT
AUTHOR OF "AMERICAN BOYS' HANDY BOOK," ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1915
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
T.ILDEN F
COPYRIGHT, IQI5, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PUBLISHED NOVEMBER,
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PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, PA.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For the use and arrangement of insects
on colored plates we are indebted to the
American Museum of Natural His-
tory and particularly to Dr. Frederick
Lucas and Dr. Frank Eugene Lutz, for their
sympathetic and generous aid in the work.
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CONTENTS
PAGE
FORE TALK: A FORE TALK ABOUT INSECTS, Buc-A-Boos, BUG-BEARS,
BUG-HOUSES AND HUM-BUGS. HOW THE WRITER LEARNED THE
LIFE HISTORY OF BEETLES How HE USED THEM FOR HORSES . . 1
CHAPTER ONE
BUILDING A MAKE-BELIEVE INSECT. COMPARING A BEETLE WTH A
BOY 13
CHAPTER TWO
How TO EQUIP ONESELF FOR COLLECTING INSECTS. How TO IMPRO-
VISE BOTTLES FOR ALCOHOLIC SPECIMENS. How TO HAVE POISON
BOTTLES MADE. How TO MAKE DRYING BOARDS AND SPECIMEN
BOXES. How TO MAKE BUTTERFLY NETS AND How TO USE THEM 30
CHAPTER THREE
THE BUTTERFLY AND MOTH FAMILY 54
CHAPTER FOUR
AMERICAN SILK-W T ORMS AND GIANT NIGHT-BUTTERFLIES, MOTHS, OR
MILLERS 66
CHAPTER FIVE
AMERICAN ROYALTY 100
CHAPTER SIX
SPHINX AND HAWK MILLERS, JUG-HANDLES AND TOBACCO WORMS.
NOTCH- WINGED MOTHS 108
CHAPTER SEVEN
SUNSHINE MOTHS. CLEAR-WINGED MILLERS. HUMMING-BIRD
MOTHS. THE WHITE DEATH. FRUIT BORERS AND SQUASH-
VINE MILLER 115
CHAPTER EIGHT
UNDER- WING MILLER. TIGER AND LEOPARD MILLERS. YELLOW
BEARS. HOBO CATERPILLARS 121
vii
viii Contents
CHAPTER NINE
PESTIFEROUS MILLERS, TENT CATERPILLARS, ARMY WORMS, DIS-
REPUTABLE CUT- WORMS AND THE END OF THE MOTH TALKS .... 132
CHAPTER TEN
THE SWALLOW-TAILED BUTTERFLIES, PARSLEY "WORMS," ICHNEU-
MONS, THE GREEN-CLOUDED SWALLOW-TAIL, THE TIGER SWALLOW-
TAIL, AND THE ZEBRA SWALLOW-TAIL 147
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHITE CABBAGE BUTTERFLY, YELLOW BUTTERFLY, THE GOSSAMERS,
COPPER AND BLUE GOSSAMERS, THE MONARCH BUTTERFLY, THE
VICEROY BUTTERFLY, THE APHRODITE AND MYRINA BUTTERFLIES.
THE PHAETON BUTTERFLY, ANGEL-WING BUTTERFLIES, THE L
BUTTERFLY, THE ANTIOPA BUTTERFLY, THE RED ADMIRAL, THE
BROWNIES AND THE SKIPPER BUTTERFLY 166
CHAPTER TWELVE
COLEOPTERA. NAMES OF PARTS OF A BEETLE. GRUBWORMS AND
WHERE AND How TO COLLECT BEETLES. LIVING SUBMARINES
AND HYDROPLANES. A DOODLE TRAP. PET BEETLES. WHIRLI-
GIGS. LIONS AND TIGERS OF THE PONDS. How DIVERS CARRY
AIR UNDER WATER 190
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TIGER BEETLES. HOBGOBLINS' DENS AND A REAL MAGIC TRICK.
CATERPILLAR HUNTERS. BLIND HARPALUS BEETLES AND OTHER
BLIND INSECTS IN MOTHER NATURE'S CAVE FOR THE BLIND.
CARRION BEETLES. UNDERTAKER AND GRAVE-DIGGER BEETLES.
AMUSING FACTS ABOUT CARRION BEETLES, FLIES AND ROVE
BEETLES 211
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE DESTRUCTIVE SKIN-EATER (DERMESTES), FOND OF ONE'S SPECI-
MENS, CARPETS AND FURNITURE. STAG BEETLES OR PINCH-BUGS.
THE GOLDSMITH BEETLE. JUNE BUGS. THE SPOTTED PELIDNOTA
OR GRAPE-VINE BEETLE . 226
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TUMBLE-BUGS USEFUL AS SCAVENGERS. A NOVEL METHOD OF MAK-
ING MODERN ANTIQUE SCARABS. SAWHORN BEETLES, SNAP-BUGS
OR SPRING BEETLES. A SNAP-BUG SPIRIT SEANCE. FIRE-FLIES
OR LIGHTNING BUGS . 239
Contents ix
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DEAD-BEAT STYLOPS. WEEVILS. PEA WEEVILS AND OTHER EVILS.
BALTIMORE ORIOLE'S FONDNESS FOR GRUB OF THE PEA WEEVIL.
GOAT- OR CAPRICORN-BEETLES. LEAF-BEETLES. POTATO-BUGS.
ELM-BEETLES. UNDESIRABLE CITIZENS AND LADY-BUGS 251
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BUGS, BEGINNING WITH SOME OF THE LOWEST, MOST DEGRADED
OF THE BUG FAMILY. PARASITE DEAD-BEATS AND OUTCAST
BUGS. PLANT LICE. SCALES AND APHIDES 270
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LEAF AND TREE HOPPERS. GROTESQUE AND COMMERCIAL INSECTS.
CUCKOO-SPIT. HARVEST FLY, LOCUST AND SEVENTEEN- YEAR
LOCUSTS. A METHUSELAH AMONG INSECTS. SEVENTEEN- YEAR
LOCUSTS ATTEND A BALL IN KENTUCKY. How THEY SAW HOLES
IN THE TWIGS. How THEY ARE PREYED UPON BY DRAGON-FLIES
AND WASPS. HARMLESS PLAYMATES. PUPA SKINS AS TOYS 280
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WATER BUGS. CAKES OF WATER-BUGS' EGGS. WATER BOATMEN.
WATER SCORPIONS. BEWARE OF WATER-BUGS' STING. GIANT
WATER-BUG. WATER-BUG SUFFRAGIST. GENTLE WATER-BUG AS
A NURSE GIRL. SKATERS OR GLIDERS 289
THE AMERICAN BOYS' BOOK
OF BUGS, BUTTERFLIES
AND BEETLES
FORE TALK
A FORE TALK ABOUT INSECTS, BUG-A-BOOS, BUG-BEARS,
BUG-HOUSES AND HUM-BUGS
HOW THE WRITER LEARNED THE LIFE HISTORY OF
BEETLES HOW HE USED THEM FOR HORSES.
AMONG the little folk of this world known as
the insects, we find almost as many traits of char-
acter as we do among the human beings. We have
the idle insects, the industrious insects, the warlike
insects, the robber insects, the dead-beat insects, the
stupid insects and the intelligent insects. We also
have among them the low, degraded insects, dirty
insects, clean insects, the sluggish slow-moving in-
sects, the bright lively insects, the useful insects and
the beautiful insects ; all of them are interesting, all
of them in one way or another are of vast impor-
tance to man, and a study of their habits is not only
a source of fun but it is also a most useful study.
Besides which, boys, nature lovers live longer and
happier lives than ordinary people!
2 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
Probably the first collection the reader will
want to make will be butterflies, not because
butterflies have more interesting lives or bodies,
or even are the most beautiful, for some beetles
rival the butterflies in beauty, but because but-
terflies are better advertisers than any of the rest
of the insects. They display their beauties, at-
tract the attention of the boys and even of the
more stupid grown people. I say stupid grown
people, because one boy of twelve who is alert
and fond of nature will see and observe more
things than the best-trained naturalist of thirty.
A boy of twelve has not had his mind bothered by
worldly things which dull the perception of a man,
consequently the boy will see more, feel more, hear
more, and smell more than the older person.
Not long since I was in the Smithsonian In-
stitution at Washington in one of the private rooms
not open to the general public and there I was
shown drawer after drawer of butterflies, some of
them so closely resembling each other that only a
scientist could detect the points of difference, and
enough of them to probably cover an acre or more
of ground.
Few of my readers will want to make such a vast
Fore Talk 3
collection as that at the Smithsonian Institution at
4
Washington, and probably none of them ever will,
for the collection at the National Capital is made
up of the contributions of many, many collectors,
but some of my readers may contribute to the col-
lection at Washington or exchange specimens with
the people at Washington, whom they will find ever
ready to assist them in their work and encourage
them in their study.
Do not be afraid of the big men at the head of
our country's scientific department; they are all
good fellows, they love the boys, especially the
young naturalists, even better than they love their
treasured collection of dried bugs, butterflies and
beetles.
Every one who has read Mark Twain's works
is familiar with tumble " bugs," which are not bugs
at all, but beetles. As a rule, beetles are hard-
shelled insects with their wings covered up with
two neatly fitting lids which give them a back not
unlike a turtle's. Every boy in the Southwest has
enjoyed himself on a summer day watching a pair
of tumble " bugs " roll their ball along the ground.
Perhaps he has put a twig in their path and laughed
to see the tumble " bugs " stop pushing the ball to
4 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
knowingly walk around and investigate to see what
chocked the ball so that it would not roll, work their
heads as if they were nodding with self-approval
for having discovered the trouble, then proceed to
roll the ball around the obstruction.
The scarab or sacred beetle of Egypt is noth-
ing but a tumble "bug"; the old Egyptians, like
the boys of to-day, were wont to watch the tumble
: bugs ' roll their ball along the ground ; the
Egyptians thought they rolled this ball from sun-
rise to sunset; and because of the thirty joints in the
scarabs of their six feet they came to the conclusion
that these joints represented the thirty days of the
month. Then they set their imagination mill to
working and deified the tumble " bug." Even the
Roman soldiers wore a tumble " bug " on their sig-
net rings. Tumble ' : bugs ' ' are funny, but people
are sometimes funnier than any bug.
Fore Talk 5
There are some beetles so large that they would
frighten timid people and some so small that one
must use a magnifying glass to properly see them.
They are all of them strong in proportion to their
size; many of them are armed with pincers, like
the well-known pinch "bug" of the Southwest, the
friend and playmate of my youth. Xot long since
when I was travelling in the southwest, one of them
flew into the car window and fell on the floor along-
side of me, then reared up its familiar mahogany-
colored body and opened its jaws ready to fight the
whole world. I had not seen a live one since I was
a boy and I felt like hugging the saucy little fighter.
The vagrant poodle told of in Tom Sawyer,"
came idling along the aisle of the church and sat
on one of these same pinch : bugs." A pinch
: bug " rightly administered can always create con-
siderable excitement.
Besides tumble : bugs ' and pinch " bugs '
there are beetles of such brilliant colors that they
look like jewels and people wear them set in
brooches, stick-pins, sleeve-buttons and ear-rings.
Some beetles carry lights at night qn their shoulder-
blades, others carry a lantern at the end of their
jointed body, some are queer, some are funny, some
6
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
are beautiful and some look dangerous, but I know
of no beetle that carries a sting, and if you know
how to pick them up, you need not fear their
pincers. When you want to take up a live beetle,
grasp it between the thumb and forefinger on
each side of the division which marks the waist
line, that is, the line which separates the shoulder
piece, called the thorax, and the body piece to which
the wing covers are attached, and then it will not
harm you, nor you it.
BUGS
In the good old days of our grandfathers it was
the custom to quote from the Scripture, no matter
what the subject of the discourse might be, and I
might, if I had one of their old Bibles, head this
fore talk with Verse 5 of Psalm XCI, which in the
old translation from the Hebrew reads, " Thou
Fore Talk 7
shalt not be afraid of any bugs by night." But the
Psalms were not referring to hemiptera, they were
referring to the old meaning of bug as a frightful
object of false terror, and in the later translations
we find the same verse reads, Thou shalt not be
afraid of the terror by night." Possibly it would
be even a better translation if it read, 'Thou shalt
not be afraid of any nightmare by night." You
see, bugs then stood for some imaginary hobgoblins
or terrible nightmare things which never had any
existence out of dreamland. Thus we know a bug-
bear to be a frightful goblin in the form of a bear,
and a bug-a-boo a sort of nightmare creature which
you are afraid is going to jump out and shout
" boo ' at you. The truth is, they were all hum-
bugs.
In Wales they call a ghost a "bug"; among
doctors and surgeons a bug is a tiny little terror,
germ or microbe whose presence in one's system
causes disease and death. One cuts a finger, gets
blood poisoning, and the doctor, looking solemn
and shaking his head, gives it a scientific name,
but to his friend the other doctor he remarks, "He
has a bug in that wound all right, and he is going
to have a serious time of it."
8 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
There is nothing about the beautiful butterflies
and big moths or even the beetles which need offend
the sensibilities of the most squeamish and silly
people; there is nothing creepy or uncanny about
them, but one cannot truthfully say the same of the
tribe of bugs. The very fact of their being called
bugs tells us that they were looked upon as unpleas-
ant things. Nevertheless the bugs are very impor-
tant in this world and consequently are interesting
creatures, hence a good collection of them is most
valuable.
Many of the bugs are quite large, but although
they are big, they are not the big bugs of human
society, neither are they bug-a-boos, bug-bears or
the inhabitants of bug-houses; they are the creat-
ures naturalists call "Hemiptera." But from the
foregoing you can see that the slang term bug '
for "bug-house" is only using the word with the
old meaning of " bug " as a terror, as a nightmare;
consequently it is very nearly correct to speak of
a lunatic asylum as a "bug-house," in other words
a " nightmare house," for if that term does not
describe it, it will be difficult to find a better one
in the dictionary.
Fore Talk
9
But don't let this worry you. Not only do
nature lovers live longer than the ordinary people,
but they never go crazy and hence are in no danger
of being confined in the bug-house. But it is a
good thing to look up the meaning of these words,
because we all talk too carelessly. Suppose, for
instance, I should tell some English boys to collect
beetles, they would bring in a lot of cockroaches,
and if I should tell them to collect bugs, they would
bring in a most unpleasant collection of little creat-
ures with which all travellers have been forced to
be altogether too familiar, and hence have little
desire to see a collection of them. But, if I should
tell the American boys to bring in a collection of
bugs, there would be nothing in the insect world
10 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
that they could capture which would not be found
in their collection.
If you will go to the pumpkin vine, the gourd
vine, the squash vine, you can probably find some
of the ill-smelling insects known to the country
boys as " stink bugs," and to the farmer as " squash
bugs ' -these are real bugs.
In the United States we have about sixteen
hundred varieties of bugs which have been labelled*
but Prof. R. P. Uhler, of Baltimore, is quoted by
Mr. Leland O. Howard as saying "there are prob-
ably five thousand species of bugs in the United
States and he thinks that fifty thousand would not
be too large an estimate of the number of different
bugs in the world." From this you may learn that
if you want to get down to business and make a
complete collection of bugs there will not be time
for butterflies and beetles, nor will you have much
time to devote to any other branch of study or
play; still, one can make a fine collection without
giving up all of one's time to it.
Bugs, like women, seem to be very fond of
perfume, but, like some of the women, the perfume
they use is not always the kind we would choose.
The squash bug and the chinch bug have not
Fore Talk 11
selected their perfume with the care we should wish ;
some of the other bugs, though, as well as some
beetles, have the odor of ripe fruit, some smell like
cinnamon and spices, which is not so bad and a
little whiff is rather agreeable. The odor of bugs
comes from an easily evaporated (volatile) oil which
is hidden in the tubes of the body of the bug and
the creatures probably squeeze this oil out at their
pleasure and use it as a perfume, not always like
the ladies, to make themselves attractive, but some-
times apparently to make themselves so disagree-
able that birds, toads and other creatures will refuse
to eat them. Like the skunks among the mammals,
the repulsive odor of some bugs seems to be their
gentle art of self-defense.
The big bugs among bugs, using the term as
they use it in society (not to represent the natural
size of bugs ) , are the true bugs, they belong to the
' 400." Notwithstanding that they are the swells
of bugland, if some fatal plague should wipe out
all the bugs in creation there are not many of us
who would weep over their death, yet even this
event might in some unlooked-for manner upset the
balance of nature and cause disastrous results.
All bugs are " suckers," they have a long nose
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
like a bill, proboscis or beak which they poke into
the plant as does the squash bug and thus suck its
juice, poke into the skin of other bugs and cater-
pillars and suck out the juices, or poke into our
skins like some well-known bugs, and thus suck
our juice, or poke their bills into the openings of
bivalves ( clams ) , into the bodies of snails and even
into the bodies of small fishes and suck their juices,
as do the large water bugs.
While I am dictating
this, there is in one of my
aquariums in front of me
a dead goldfish killed by
a water bug much smaller
than the fish. These water
bugs are not always successful in their attempts
to suck the juices out of other creatures. One
I kept in an aquarium thrust its long imperti-
nent nose into the shell of a fresh-water clam.
It was a small bivalve, about the size of one's
finger-nail, but when it felt that inquisitive nose
come into its private apartment it closed its little
doors tightly and quickly, and for three days that
water bug was forced to swim around with a clam
Fore Talk
13
shell pinched on to the end of its proboscis and
probably it had a sore nose for days thereafter.
My readers have a great advantage over the
boys of yesterday- -they have an advantage in the
fact that they now have books written for them to
tell them these things, also nature studies in all the
schools, besides parents and teachers who are in-
terested in such studies, whereas the boys of yester-
day had no such books and the only nature stories
printed were too absurd for a place outside of
Mother Goose.
In spite of the dearth of books on our insect
neighbors, however, when the writer was five years
old he had learned by personal investigation the
whole history of at least one beetle, he knew the
male from the female beetle, he knew the eggs and
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
nere they were deposited. He knew that the
young were grub-worms that he used for bait when
fishing for sun-fish, and he found all this out by
watching the beetles themselves. He was very
much puzzled when he watched the female grape-
ne beetle deposit her eggs because the eggs were
uch small objects compared to the beetles and
there were no little beetles; they all seemed to be
the same size, that is, all the light-colored female
beetles were of one size and the darker colored
males a little smaller, but there were no baby sizes,
no half -grown sizes.
The writer used these beetles for play horses,
hitched them up to little paper sleighs, fed them
on grape-vine leaves and kept what might be called
"stables of them." There was another kind of
beetle of a brilliant metallic green that he had fre-
quently seen in the neighborhood of rotten stumps ;
this excited his curiosity and caused him to dig into
Fore Talk
the decaying wood and bring to view many gru
worms ; then he discovered some mummy-like creat-
ures which were not grub-worms and not beetles,
and he also found some perfect and evidently brand-
new beetles. That set him to thinking and at last
it occurred to him that the grub-worms were th
baby beetles and the mummies were grub-worm
changing their forms.
The writer's mother had once shown him where
to hunt for the chrysalides of butterflies on the
under side of the top rail of the white paling fence,
and he had often found the pretty jewelled sleep-
ing bag or chrysalis which covers the baby butterfly
while it is hanging head downward under the pro-
tecting rail, and he knew that this shell concealed
the caterpillar while it was changing form; hence,
a glance was sufficient for him to know that these
things he found in the rotten stump which were
neither grubs nor beetles, but helpless things half-
way between, corresponded with the chrysalis state
of the butterfly.
It was a grand discovery for him; he now knew
that the grub-worms were young beetles! He
shouted and danced with delight, for it was his
first real scientific discovery; no one had helped
16
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
him with the beetle problem and there was no one
except his good mother with whom he could share
his triumph because nobody else in those days
seemed to care whether beetles were born ready-
made or lived a baby's life as grub-worms. There
was no one but his mother to sympathize with him,
everybody else looked upon the studies of a country
boy simply as a sign of his being queer and uncanny ;
it seemed strange to them that a child should take
any interest in grub-worms! But this did not cool
his enthusiasm because he did not love nature for
the personal glory the knowledge of it would bring
him, and he did not study it to gain the approval
of the other boys ; he loved nature because he could
not help it, the love was born in him and it is there
yet, and he is writing this book because he thinks
it is born in all children! Young people all pos-
Fore Talk
17
sess it, although they may not know it, but as soon
as they find it out, the author believes they will
become as enthusiastic as he was himself when, as
a barefooted little urchin in northern Ohio he made
his first scientific investigation and discovered that
grub-worms were baby beetles.
CHAPTER ONE
BUILDING A MAKE-BELIEVE INSECT
COMPARING A BEETLE WITH A BOY
IN order that we may understand the plan
upon which insects are built, and, for that matter,
the plan upon which every live creature is built, we
must compare them to something we understand;
probably the easiest way to do this is to pretend
or make believe that we are about to create an
insect ourselves, that we have in our hands some
putty, clay, dough, chewing gum or modelling wax ;
the latter is best, so we will call it wax and from
this stuff we are going to model the live creatures.
First we will roll the wax between our two
hands (Fig. 1) and make of it a sort of worm, a
kind of fat angle-worm, or, as the boys call it, a
fish-worm. This, you will see, looks like a worm,
and feels like a worm, but it is not alive and can-
not move and if it should become alive it would
not live long because we have made no provision
for supplying new flesh and skin as the old ones
wear out and waste away. To supply this need,
we must have a mouth and stomach ; in other words
18
Building a Make-Believe Insect
19
our worm must be hollow all the way through from
one end to the other so that it may take in fuel in
the form of food to keep its engines going, absorb
the good part of the food and throw the refuse or
ashes away.
With a broom-straw (Fig. 2) we will punch a
hole in our worm from end to end; now then, if
some fairy will kindly arrange inside of this wax-
worm the proper tubes to soak up or absorb the
good part of the food, then if this fairy will touch
this thing with her wand and give it life it will be
a very crude, but possible, form of a worm. It
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
would be hardly less crude, however, than that
strange creature we find just below low- tide mark,
called a " sea-squirt ' by the boys and an Ascidian
by the school-teachers ; but as this book is not about
worms or sea-squirters, we are not interested in
these things at present beyond the fact that we
begin with this form of life only because it is very
simple and easily understood. In fact, it is so
simple that it would be hard for us to tell which is
the head and the tail of the wax-worm just made.
But do not let this worry you because our wax-
worm does not differ in this respect very greatly
from some forms of real live things. In order to
make our wax-worm look like a caterpillar, we will
tie a number of threads about its body (Fig. 3).
The first section we will call its head, the next sec-
tion, which we have made bigger than the head,
we will call its shoulders or chest and the other
sections we will call its body, belly or paunch.
We are making believe that the fairy has given
Building a Make-Believe Insect
life to our wax-made worm and it can absorb food,
but it has no feeling, it has no sight, no taste, so
that it will cat any old thing as food. This is be-
cause we have not supplied it with the battery, so
to speak, and connecting
telegraph lines which we
call nerves and which make
it possible for live creat-
ures to see, taste, smell,
and feel. To do this it
will be necessary for us
to run a telegraph line
through our wax form,
from end to end, and to
have small branch lines
running to the surface.
Fig. 4 shows one of these
telegraphic systems such as
is really found in a cater-
pillar. Now then, when-
ever these wires are short-circuited, our wax- worm
will be doubled with pain. The principal differ-
ence between this system in the caterpillar and the
system in the body of the reader lies in the fact that
the central station is not of so much importance
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
in the caterpillar as it is in the man in truth, the
caterpillar has numerous sub-stations and it might
be said that it has a separate brain for each ring of
its body. The stations are made by bunching a lot
of wires together, that is a lot of the nerves, and
making a " ganglion " of nerves which in Fig. 5 we
call the brain. The lower forms of animals prac-
tically have many brains or one brain running from
one end of their body to the other, so that when
you cut the creature in two pieces each piece is
alive and remains alive for some time; but if you
cut a man in half, or cut his head off, you sever the
cable, that is, you disconnect the wires, the spinal
cord, and all feeling ceases, in other words, he
is dead. Fig. 5 shows a rough plan of your own
telegraph system with the central station at the
top. Of course there are branch nerves which run
off to your arms, legs and all parts of your body,
but these have been omitted and the diagram simply
shows the main cable lines.
Besides having a telegraphic communication in
your body like that of a caterpillar, you also have
the hole punched through it which you call your
mouth, throat, etc.
But we must not forget the wax on which we
Building a Make-Believe Insect 23
are at work; of course it should have some legs.
These we will make by pinching and flattening the
sides of the first joints behind the head * (Fig. 6),
after which we will cut the flattened side into six
flaps (Fig. 7) ; next we will roll these flaps be-
tween our fingers and make legs of them, then we
push the tail towards the head, thus crowding the
rings together in the form shown by Fig. 8. Our
wax thing now begins to look like an insect. A
very low and degraded form, it is true, but we must
have a creature with a hole for its mouth and a tube
for its stomach and six legs with which to walk.
Most insects, however, are supplied with wings of
some sort and these may be easily made; we have,
however, gone far enough to understand, in a gen-
eral manner, the construction of the little creatures
about which we are to talk through the rest of the
chapters of the book.
Of course you know that every live thing which
is not a plant is an animal. A beetle, a worm, a
fly, a bug are animals. The creatures you gener-
ally call animals, such as dogs, cats, horses and
elephants, are animals, too, but they belong to the
family of milk-givers called mammals. But bugs,
* See illustration, page 19.
24 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
butterflies and beetles are not mammals, they are
not warm-blooded milk-givers. In order that we
may be certain that we understand this subject and
at the risk of being thought undignified, I have
drawn some pictures here of a boy and an insect,
showing their similarity and their difference.
As we have already suggested, the best way
to understand anything which is mysterious to us
is to compare it with something with which we are
familiar. Now, then, so that we may not scare the
reader with a dull talk on comparative anatomy,
we will skip all the big words and get down to
what the boys in their slang talk call "brass tacks,"
which if I understand aright means " bottom
facts."
To begin with, we know, of course, that the
reader does not look like a beetle, bug or butterfly,
but we also know that there are certain things which
all live creatures possess in common. All live creat-
ures must have blood or some sort of juice which
serves as blood, all live creatures must have a head
and some sort of breathing apparatus. All live
creatures must have some kind of a hole for a
mouth, something which acts as j aws, teeth, tongue,
throat and stomach. Also most live creatures must
Comparing a Beetle with a Boy
have some means of locomotion, that is, moving
from one spot to another; in the higher orders of
life these organs of locomotion are called "legs."
But one of the first differences which any child
will see between beetles and himself is that the
former creatures have a skeleton on the outside of
their bodies with their muscles and blood-vessels
9
and all their internal organs located inside their
bones, while with himself the reader knows that
the muscles, blood-vessels, nerves and other organs
are plastered, so to speak, on or around the frame-
work of his skeleton. In other words, the human
skeleton is the framework of the body like the
frame of a kite, the framework of a boat or the
framework of a house, and our own frame or
skeleton's use is evidently to stiffen and to hold our
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
body together and keep it from sagging down into
a helpless lump like a bag of meal.
By referring to the diagram (Fig. 12) the
reader will also see that the insects have six legs
instead of four. We have four legs, our front or
fore-legs we call anus, the hind ones we call our
legs. But the fly (Fig. 9) and the beetle (Figs. 11
and 12) and all other such creatures not only have
legs and arms like a human
being but they also have a
middle pair of legs.
In the illustrations ( Figs.
9, 10 and 11) are shown
the head, arms and chest
of a man, also of a com-
mon house-fly (Fig. 9) and
just below the man that
of a spotted yellow grape-vine beetle (Fig. 11).
Roughly speaking, there is some resemblance
between the three each has a head, a body and
front legs or arms. The head of the fly and
the head of the man are separated from the chest
by a more or less slender neck, but the beetle's
head is jammed into its chest. Following these
three diagrams is one of another beetle (Fig. 12)
Comparing a Beetle with a Boy
the scientific name of which is Harpalus caligino-
sus pardon the big name, I did not intend to use it
but the name has nothing to do with the diagram,
which shows the front side of the beetle, that is,
what would be the front side of the beetle if the
latter walked on its hind legs like a man; in reality
it is the under side of the beetle. In the diagram
(Fig. 12) I have shown by
dotted lines the parts which
do not resemble the man,
that is, the extra pair of legs
and its belly, which it carries on
its back, and in the diagram of
the man (Fig. 14) is shown,
with dotted lines, the outside
covering of the bones of the legs
and arms, for to make the man
like the beetle we must strip off the outside covering
of muscles from the bones and put muscles and
blood-vessels and nerves inside of them.
Besides the diagram of the man (Fig. 14) is
the rough chart showing the muscles on a man's
leg, also an insect's leg split in half so that one
may see the muscles on the inside of an insect's
leg (Fig. 13).
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
We will not carry this comparison any further
because this book is about bugs, butterflies and
beetles and not comparative anatomy, but it is im-
portant that you understand in a rough way just
how like or, if you choose, unlike, we are to these
tiny creatures.
To make an insect of a man, you would have to
prolong the man's body way down below his knees,
push his skeleton out in the
front, give him another pair of
legs, cover his back with a
shell like a turtle and make
him creep on his feet with the
front side of his body next to
the ground. There are other
things you would have to do
with his back. You would
have to arrange for wings; in fact you would
have to do so much to the man to make an insect
of him that the job would not be worth while,
besides which it would not be exactly proper to so
treat a man, because according to many scientists
it has taken centuries and centuries for man to
evolve, that is, to grow from some sort of pulp
or jelly-fish to a land animal, to a missing link,
Comparing a Beetle with a Boy 29
' and then to a man, and it would be imkind to send
him away back to the insect world.
We have no exact record of man's growth to
his present dignified position in nature, but every
one of my readers can see the transformation of
an insect, see how it grows from an egg to a worm,
from a worm to an animated mummy, from a
mummy to a perfect winged beetle, beautiful moth,
or gorgeous butterfly according to the particular
kind of eggs first observed.
CHAPTER TWO
HOW TO EQUIP ONESELF FOR COLLECTING INSECTS
HOW TO IMPROVISE BOTTLES FOR ALCOHOLIC SPECIMENS
HOW TO HAVE POISON BOTTLES MADE
HOW TO MAKE DRYING BOARDS AND SPECIMEN BOXES
HOW TO MAKE BUTTERFLY NETS AND HOW TO USE THEM
THERE is no doubt, boys, that you are of great
importance on this earth, and in all my writings
and in all my talks I have taken pains to show how
important you are. But do not be conceited; if
there is any danger of you thinking you are "IT,"
to use another one of your expressions, you have
" another think coming," for you are only living
on this earth by permission of the birds. If all the
birds were killed, the insects would eat up every-
thing in sight, they would devour the forests, and
the world would be an uninhabitable desert.
It is an exceedingly dangerous thing to upset
the balance of nature or, as my good friend Doctor
Hornaday puts it, ' ' to monkey with nature's buzz-
saw." Bugs, butterflies and beetles are a busy
lot, they need watching, they are mischievous little
gnomes, but the Great Creator supplied the earth
with birds to keep these little insect fairies in sub-
so
I
Collecting Insects 31
jection. Why, one pair of gypsy moths, if left
alone, under favorable conditions, can produce
enough caterpillars in eight years to destroy every
green leaf in the United States; the Kaiser, the
Allies and all the guns, aeroplanes and submarines
could not possibly do as much damage as one pair
of gypsy moths and their children.
Suppose there were no birds, and the little bug
called the hop aphis, which infests the hop vine,
were left alone and unmolested. After a careful
calculation, one naturalist tells us, and we have no
reason to doubt what he says, that a pair of these
little hop bugs would breed so fast that in less
than a year there would be six sextillions, 6,000,-
000,000,000,000,000,000 children, grandchildren,
great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchil-
dren, etc., all sucking the juice out of the hop vines.
This number is too big for us to get the proper
perspective view of it, unless we put it another
way, and a Mr. Forbush has done this for us. He
has figured it out about this way: If you place
these little bugs, ten of them to an inch, on a
straight line, then shoot the line of them up into
the sky, it will reach so far into space that, should
the last little aphis on the line flash a light as big as
32 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
the sun, it would take TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUN-
DRED YEARS for the light to reach the earth! Think
of it! If this line had been projected up into the
sky, into space, and the last little bug had flashed
his light five hundred years before the birth of
Christ, we, to-day, would not yet have been able to
see that light, we would not even know it was there.
Creeping, crawling, flying, burrowing over and
under the crust of this old earth, are about one
million different kinds of creatures, of which we
have only labelled and sorted out about three hun-
dred thousand varieties. Of course you will not
find them all in this book or any other book; it
would take many of Carnegie's largest libraries to
hold enough books to describe them all.
The writer has lived quite a while, but during
his lifetime there have been only a few mammals
discovered (you see the mammals or milk-giving
animals are so big that they are easily found if one
visits their haunts ) , but every day we can walk over
new bugs, butterflies and beetles without seeing
them, or miss them even when hunting for them;
this makes the game fascinating and much more
interesting and useful than collecting birds' eggs
or birds. Why, every bird wears a halo around
Bottles for Alcoholic Specimens 33
its head if you could only see it, and it is worse
than a crime to kill them.
I am telling you all this to impress upon your
minds the importance of your work and play in
collecting and studying insects and because there
are a lot of good-hearted, sentimental women who
do not use their heads to think, and consequently
tell you that it is cruel to collect butterflies, to
collect beetles and to kill caterpillars, which is not
true; but it is cruel, mean and selfish to destroy
the birds.
If you intend to make a collection of bugs, but-
terflies and beetles, begin by first making a col-
lection of small bottles such as are used to contain
homoeopathic pills (Fig. 16) or the sort sometimes
used to hold individual fancy cigars, also any other
small wide-mouthed bottles which you can procure.
Making this collection in itself will be fun. While
you are doing this, it will not be amiss to make a
collection of all the corks you can get hold of; they
are just the things you want to which to pin in-
sects. Then make a collection of small tin boxes
used to hold small quantities of tobacco and also
those used to contain some kinds of preserved foods
sold in the grocery and delicatessen stores, speak-
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
ing about delicatessen stores reminds me that some
firms also put up things in glass jars about the
size of a half tumbler which make splendid bowls
in which to hold water bugs, caddice worms and
other creatures found in brooks or ponds. In the
illustration (Figs. 15 and 17) are shown some of
these different sorts of glasses which were this
minute secured from the top shelf of the pantry.
The shortest one came from the delicatessen store,
and if I remember aright originally contained some
sort of preserved fish, but what was its original
use is of no importance to us except as it suggests
where to look for it.
If the boys of to-day, however, are anything
like the boys of yesterday, they will be able to get a
supply of these bottles, jars, tumblers and so forth
without much trouble. In most households these
Bottles for Alcoholic Specimens 35
things are thrown away after their contents have
been used, and every ash dump has a supply of
them.
Ordinary bottles with narrow necks are not
good for live specimens as they do not supply
enough air, while for both live and dead specimens
they are awkward to handle because of the narrow
necks and consequent danger of injuring the insect
while introducing it into the bottle or taking it
out. At the ten-cent stores I have been able to
secure a number of small fish globes which are
used by me in which to keep live water beetles,
water bugs, skaters, boat-beetles, the larvae, that
is the young, of the dragon-flies, as well as snails,
periwinkles and small fresh-water clams. The
latter creatures are the food supply for the water
bugs.
THE USE OF PILL BOXES
A lot of little wooden pill boxes are very handy
for delicate or minute specimens, and it is a good
idea to have cotton in some of the boxes on which
to place your trophies.
PINS
The collector will need pins, but it is not neces-
sary to buy the long German skewers, although
36 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
they are made for this purpose. The German pins
come in several sizes and are longer than our
ordinary pins but not so thick. Professional bug
hunters or, to use their chosen name, entomologists,
use the professional pin and No. 1 can be used for
minute specimens, little teeny-weeny bugs, gnats
and so forth, but even then it is sometimes neces-
sary to gum the little creatures on a piece of paper,
so small are they, and then run the pin through
the paper. If these German insect pins are out of
your reach, use fine needles or even broom straws
for your small insects and ordinary pins for the
others.
i
EQUIPMENT
The next thing necessary in the preparation
for your campaign as a collector, is to make drying
boards (Figs. 19-24). When the writer was a
small boy, he made drying boards for himself, and
no doubt his readers can do the same. In a pinch,
a stiff piece of writing paper (Fig. 19) may be
pressed into service as a drying board.
When everything is ready to receive the cap-
tives, you must prepare some nets (Fig. 27) with
which to catch the butterflies, grasshoppers and
Poison Bottles
37
flying creatures and some slumber bottles in which
to drop the captives where they will be over-
come with chloroform and other poisonous fumes
(Fig. 18).
POISON BOTTLES
I have tried burning matches, I have tried
mashed-up peach-tree leaves, kerosene and cam-
phor, but none of these makeshifts kill quickly
enough, they all give the victim time to flap around
and spoil itself as a specimen, so I think you will
have to spend a few pennies possibly for chloro-
form.
38 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
CYANIDE BOTTLE
Mr. H. S. Surface, M.S., of the Pennsylvania
Department of Agriculture, advises the dropping
of a lump of cyanide of potassium the size of a
small hickory nut into the bottom of an empty
bottle and covering it with dry plaster of Paris,
after which he tells us to pour enough water on
the plaster of Paris to make it set as you do cement.
The proper way to dry this bottle is to set it upside
down and allow it to drain until the plaster hardens.
Next cut out a piece of blotting paper just the
right size to fit over the plaster of Paris, like a
gun wad over a charge of powder. It should be
large enough to make it necessary to use force to
crowd it down on the plaster, where it will then
stay as a protection both to the insects and the
plaster (Fig. 18). A slumber bottle or poison
bottle of this kind must be kept tightly corked at
all times except when the cork is momentarily re-
moved in order to drop an insect into the bottle.
A cream bottle makes a good slumber chamber.
Of course, any boy with common sense will know
better than to put his own nose over a bottle full
of fumes poisonous enough to kill insects. To say
the least, the breathing of these fumes will do him
Poison Bottles 39
little good. Such a bottle should be guarded with
care, for if it is broken, children might get hold
of the contents with most serious results. Tell the
druggist how to make a slumber bottle and let him
prepare it for you. It is best to dissolve the cyanide
first by pouring in the bottle enough water for
the purpose, then sprinkling the plaster of Paris
over the mixture until there is enough plaster to
harden into a firm shell of cement. The druggist
will not sell you cyanide unless you have a permit,
as it is a dangerous poison; for that reason chloro-
form is still used by many to kill the insects.
.
THE CHLOROFORM BOTTLE
First put a wad of absorbent cotton in the
empty bottle, then saturate the cotton with chloro-
form, and over this place a pad of blotting paper
as already described for the cyanide bottle. The
chloroform bottle, too, must be kept tightly corked
or the chloroform will evaporate. All such bottles
should be labelled with the skull and crossbones and
the word POISON!
DANGER
Since the cyanide of potassium is sealed in the
bottle with the plaster of Paris and further pro-
40 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
tected by the wad of blotting paper, there is prac-
tically no danger of any foolish persons injuring
themselves with it, and as the chloroform is all in
the cotton and also sealed by a wad of paper, there
is practically no danger from it. But poisons, like
fire-arms, are made to kill, and neither poison nor
fire-arms have any brains of their own; they have
but one duty to perform and that is to kill; you
must supply the brains for them in order that they
do no damage to valuable animals and human
beings.
A boob who points a loaded or unloaded gun
at anyone should be soundly thrashed for the act,
and a boob who fools with poison and does not use
the proper precautions in handling it should be
treated in the same manner by any person who
detects him in his carelessness.
HOW TO MAKE THE DRYING BOARD
There are two ways of drying a butterfly: om
is with the wings perfectly horizontal, and the other
is with the wings tipped at a slight angle. The
position of the wings depends upon the slant of
the side-boards (Fig. 20). To make the wings
horizontal, that is, on a level with each other, the
Drying Boards 41
end board (Fig. 21) need not be notched or cut in
on the bias, but the top of it may be level with the
bottom, otherwise the drying boards are made in
the same manner as the one shown in the illus-
tration.
Of course the drying boards for big fat moths
or night butterflies should have a wider slot than
the one for day butterflies, which have narrow or
slim bodies. In order that the reader may decide
for himself, it would be best for him to go out into
the fields and collect a number of butterflies and
some big moths, like the one shown in Fig. 24, and
then make the slots in his drying boards correspond
to the size of the bodies of the insects.
First he takes the two ends (Fig. 21 ), cuts them
exactly alike, so that when laid one on top of the
other they both agree edge for edge with no over-
lapping. Next he takes two smooth pieces of soft
pine wood, each exactly the same size as the other,
for side-boards like those shown in Fig. 20; these
he tacks on the end boards as shown in Fig. 21,
using the little brad nails from a cigar box ; or if he
has no cigar box, he takes some ordinary pins and
files off the points as shown in Fig. 22, thus mak-
ing suitable brads for the purpose.
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
After the boards are put together, as shown
in Fig. 20, he tacks a strip of cork under the slot,
(Fig. 23), or he puts cleats on the end boards as
shown in Fig. 23 (showing the under side of the
drying boards), fastens the cork to them or puts
the cork on in any way his ingenuity suggests, but
it is necessary that it shall be firm and not sag.
COLLECTING NETS
There are numerous kinds of nets used for
collecting water insects, but every net is more or
less awkward to carry on a hike and I have found
that 01, the best things with which to catch
aquatic (water) creatures is simply a piece of wire
netting such as is used to screen the windows of
our houses to keep out flies and mosquitoes. The
piece I have is 17 inches wide and two feet long. I
roll it up as shown in Fig. 25^ and in this position
't is easily carried. When I want to use it, I
Butterfly Nets 43
unroll it, grasp each side of the piece (Fig. 25)
and use it as a scoop, poking it along under the
water plants until it is covered with duck weed,
frog slime, pieces of water-cress, etc. Then quickly
and carefully lift it from the water and dump the
contents into a tin pail, or spread the wire screen
out on a board and carefully go through the mess
with the fingers, picking out the small creatures
and placing them in vials or boxes. But I find
the best way is to dump the whole mass into the
pail and then do the sorting and hunting after I
reach home. With a scoop of wire netting I can
catch little fish, sticklebacks, snails, periwinkles,
minute fresh-water clams and all the interesting
and curious creatures upon which water-b^gs and
beetles usually feed.
BUTTERFLY NET RING
For land winged creatures, such - * , pr .sshop-
pers, katydids, devil's darning needles, moths and
butterflies, we need an insect net (Fig. 27). To
make this, take a piece of telegraph wire, bend it
around and make a circle about a foot in diameter
which, you know, means across through the centre
from one side to the other. The two ends of the
.t t Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
wire should be hammered on an anvil, or you may
use a llatiron as a substitute anvil, until they are
U-nt like the ones shown in Fig. 26. These two
t -nds can then be forced into a stick of bamboo such
How to make and use a butterfly net.
as is used for a fishing rod, after which the end
should be bound with bicycle tape, copper wire or
twine to prevent the bamboo from splitting. The
handle may also be made from a small broom
handle or an old walking cane by neatly cutting
Butterfly Nets 45
two grooves one on each side of the stick, the length
of the two ends of the wire, then placing the ends
of the wire in these grooves and securing them
there with a piece of bicycle tape or twine as
already described. After this, a piece of muslin
or an old piece of sheeting may be used to cover
the wire and sewed there (Fig. 26).
THE NET BAG OE POKE
You may make a net of cheesecloth, mosquito
netting or bolting silk such as is used in flour mills,
or tarlatan, although this is usually too stiff and
does not work as well as the foregoing, or a thin,
light quality of swiss. What you need is a light,
finely meshed but transparent cloth, one that allows
the air to pass through it when the net is in motion,
and allows you to see your captive inside of it after
a successful sweep. The bottom of the bag or poke
should be rounded as shown by the pattern in
Fig. 27. It is well to sew a band of muslin at the
top of your light material which you can stitch to
your hoop and thus make your net stronger and
less liable to tear. The net should be considerably
longer than it is wide, about the proportion shown
in Fig. 27. When you have captured a butterfly
46
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
in. -JO) be careful not to bruise and injure it,
hut "as soon as its wings are folded together, as
shown in the diagram, grasp the thorax, that is,
the part of the insect corresponding to your chest,
between the thumb and forefinger; do not reach
into the net to do this, but grasp it from the out-
side and give the insect a pinch; this will kill it
without disfiguring it (Fig. 29).
How to kill an insect by pinching it.
SPECIMEN BOX
You remember that you were told to make a
collection of corks? Fig. 30 shows you a speci-
men box in which these corks are used, furnishing
foundations upon which to pin the insects (Fig.
31 ) ; a cigar box or any sort of shallow box will
do if it has a lid to it to protect its contents. To
make a specimen box, take a neat clean piece of
white cardboard (Fig. 32), cut out the corners so
Specimen Boxes
47
that you can bend back the edges and make the
cardboard fit exactly in the box as shown in Figure
30. The advantage of this box is this: the space
under the cardboard may be filled with camphor
gum, moth balls or any other material abhorred by
31
Specimen box with corks.
live insects, and after the corks are in place there
will be no danger of the camphor or moth balls
jolting around and injuring your collection. The
cardboard (Fig. 32) is glued by its folded edges
to the sides of the box (Fig. 30) . As these edges
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
are turned down, they do not show and it gives the
box a very neat appearance. Another advantage
of this specimen box lies in the fact that although
some of the corks may be big and others small, you
eau cut out the holes to fit the individual corks and
allow them all to be the same height above the
cardboard and thus give a neat and uniform ap-
pearance. The ordinary way to make a specimen
box is to line it with sheet cork; this is more ex-
36
33
Folding paper for butterfly specimen.
pensive and to my mind not as convenient as the
one here described, but corrugated brown paper,
such as is used for protecting books and other mer-
chandise when sent by express or mail, costs noth-
ing and the box may be lined with it (Fig. 42) .
BUTTERFLY ENVELOPES
These may be made by folding pieces of paper
into three-cornered envelopes (Figs. 33, 34, 35 and
36) but I usually use the envelopes made for letters
Alcoholic Specimens
49
like the one shown in Fig. 37. I fold one corner
to the centre as shown by the crease in Fig. 38, then
bend the other half over as
shown in Fig. 39, after which
I bend the flap F (Fig. 39) 37
over it as shown by Fig. 40.
If the butterfly is care-
fully placed in the triangular
envelope and then put in a
box carried in your pocket
for that purpose, it will be
safe from injury until you
reach home. If it is too dry
for the spreading board,
place it on some wet sand in
a box and the moisture will
38
39
soften it and make it pliable. How to
40
^ envelope for a
butterfly.
ALCOHOLIC SPECIMENS
These are not the sort which you can see stand-
ing in front of the bar-rooms and saloons, although
they too are almost as soft-bodied creatures as the
caterpillars, grub-worms and spiders which we are
talking about and which we want to preserve, and
here is where all our homoeopathic pill vials come
into play. Fig. 41 shows an ordinary pasteboard
.-,(1 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
box with holes cut in the cover for specimen
Lotties. Fig. 41 shows also a block of wood with
holes bored in it and an arrangement of screw eyes,
:,lso a grooved piece of wood with a cardboard
top to it. Fig. 42 shows cross-section of specimen
box with corrugated paper bottom and cardboard
false bottom through which the pins are stuck. The
first pin shows how a minute specimen is gummed
to a piece of paper; this is a German pin made for
the purpose, the second one is a broom straw put
through holes punctured by a pin.
Fig. 43 shows how to extend and hold in
position the wings of butterflies and moths by the
Specimen Boxes and Drying Boards 51
use of strips of paper and any sort of pins. The
pins are not thrust through the wings, but through
the paper outside of the borders of the wings ; this
must be done carefully so as not to rub the scales
off the wings and thus spoil the specimen.
Fig. 44 shows how to make a useful little tool
43
SECTION
or
SPECIIW4!
IB OX
Section of specimen box.
Drying board.
by taking a small stick and inserting the heads of
two small needles in the stick, leaving the points
exposed as in the lower figure; these may be used
to spread the legs of a beetle. A stick with one
needle in it makes a useful tool in arranging and
handling small specimens.
v> Buss, Butterflies, and Beetles
. > O
There is always a danger of bending pins when
they are stuck in the board by hand, hence pliers
n iv usually used to grasp the pin in place of one's
fingers.
It is not the object of the writer to tell the
ways and means of manufacturing all the things
you need, but it is his object to start you on your
Drying board and needles for holding legs.
career with a few simply made contrivances and
with the idea that as a good American boy with
pioneer ancestors you have inherited the ability to
think and devise these things yourself ; if you are
not an American boy, but come of foreign parent-
age, you have the United States History to go by,
which is the history of your adopted country and
tells about those old pioneers who are your an-
Specimen Boxes and Drying Boards 53
cestors by adoption, so that you must inherit their
gumption, self-reliance and initiative, and inherit
it by adoption. But if this book should fall into
the hands of some nice little boys who have never
whittled a stick or made a kite, they may be con-
soled with the fact that all the material necessary
for collecting insects and preserving specimens may
be purchased from firms dealing in and making a
specialty of such merchandise, and it may be added,
so can the specimens themselves, but what real boys
want to buy specimens? We are out for the fun
of collecting them, for the hike across country, for
the exploring of the ponds and streams and scout-
ing among the hedges!
CHAPTER THREE
THE BUTTERFLY AND MOTH FAMILY
To the young nature student it often seems as
if the old naturalists and professors who write
books lie awake nights to think of difficulties which
they may put in the path of the amateur. They
rummage among their Latin and Greek diction-
aries to find long and impossible names to hitch on
to the tiniest and smallest of creatures, names
which no small boy may pronounce and which no
big boy loves.
But do not think too ill of the old scientists
they are good fellows at heart and they mean well.
You see they could not take the names which you
use for things because the boy in another State
uses different names for the same things. For in-
stance, the fish called a : bass ' up north here, is
called a : trout ' down south, the bird we call a
; bob-white ' is called a quail in Ohio and a par-
tridge down south, while the ruffed grouse is also
called a partridge and a pheasant.
This way of mixing things up drives natural-
ists to hard names; besides, if they should use
The Butterfly and Moth Family 57
French, German, English, Italian or Russian
names, it would make everyone angry who did not
speak that particular language as their native
tongue.
But when it comes to Latin and Greek, these
languages are so dead that they are dried up
like Egyptian mummies and are only used by
scholars, priests and scientists, and from these
languages naturalists select their names for bugs,
butterflies and beetles, with no one but the
boy to object. Hence they call the moths and
butterflies Lepidoptera, making the word from
lepiSj a scale, and pteron, a wing in other words, a
scale-wing.
If you will rub your finger-tips across the wing
of a butterfly or a moth, the velvety surface of the
wing will come off and stick to the ends of your
fingers, and when you examine this dust with a
powerful magnifying glass you will see that it is
composed of very small scales shaped like some of
those shown in Fig. 46.
The Scale- wings are divided into twp families,
one known as the butterflies that fly by day and
the other as the butterflies that fly by night, or as
58 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
butterflies and moths. But when we speak of
moths, you must not imagine that they are all as
small as those tiny ones whose babies feed upon
our woollen clothes and furs when the latter are not
properly packed away for the summer. Some
moths are very large indeed and very beautiful;
both butterflies and moths have six legs (Fig. 45)
and four wings (Figs. 46y 2 and 47) and a pair of
feelers or smellers (antennae) (Figs. 46-58).
As you can see by the diagram, and as you
know by looking at the live insects, the wings of
the butterflies and moths are, as a rule, very broad
and are shingled with minute scales. The wing
itself is a thin paper-like skin which is stiffened
by a framework of branching ribs or veins (Fig.
59). These veins may easily be seen when the
wings have been rubbed between one's fingers.
The lepidoptera have small heads and a tongue
rolled up like a watch spring under their face;
they can uncoil their tongues when they want to
insert them into flowers to reach the honey con-
cealed there. They use their long tongues in much
the same manner that you use a straw in a glass
of lemonade.
It is not the butterflies and moths which do
FIG. 59. VEINS ON WING.
FIG. 60. DIAGRAM OF PARTS OF CATERPILLAR.
FIGS. 61, 63, 64. PUP^E OR MUMMY.
FIG. 62. A CATERPILLAR.
FIG. 65. A COCOON AND CHRYSALIS.
FIG. 66. A COCOON.
TILDtN
The Butterfly and Moth Family 61
the harm in this world, but it is their children,
the caterpillars (Figs. 60 and 62). It is a baby
moth that eats our woollen clothes and furs and it
is the babies of the bigger moths and butterflies
which eat up our garden truck, play havoc on the
farm and with the forest trees. The mother but-
terfly lays its eggs on the plant which its babies
are to use for food, the eggs hatch out into tiny
caterpillars, these caterpillars do nothing but eat!
eat ! eat ! ! When they grow too big for their skin,
a new skin is formed underneath the old one and
they crack open the old one and crawl out to eat
some more.
They keep this up until they begin to feel queer,
then they know it is time to stop eating, some-
thing mysterious is going on inside of them and
they are about to change to " pupae." This is a
word which means something wrapped up in
swaddling clothes (Fig. 61, 63, 64 and 65) like an
Indian pappoose.
This pupa shape is formed inside the skin of
the caterpillar and it wiggles its way out through
the caterpillar's skin. The butterfly pupa we call
a chrysalis, the pupa of a moth is usually concealed
inside of a silken cocoon (Figs. 65 and 66) or in a
62 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
little cell or cave underground. After a while the
skin of the pupa or chrysalis cracks, and out crawls
a limp, damp, flabby looking creature. For a while
this limp object spends its time trembling and shak-
ing as if it had the ague, but it is really shaking
the wrinkles out of its crumpled wings and allow-
ing the blood and juices to circulate through the
veins and ribs of the wings until they are fully
expanded like the paper stretched upon the frame
of a kite, then the soft veins and ribs in the wings
harden and stiffen and the perfect butterfly or
moth is ready to fly.
BUTTERFLIES
The butterflies which you usually see have
slender bodies (Fig. 46%), and when they are at
rest they will fold or close their wings as one closes
a book, bringing them together and holding them
upright; also they wiU probably own clubbed
feelers or antennas (Figs. 46% and 51 ) , whereas the
ordinary big moths that you meet will probably
have fat bodies and feathered antennge (Fig. 47).
It will surprise you to learn that our beautiful
moths and butterflies belong to a lower family than
the hymenoptera-this is another one of those oig
The Butterfly and Moth Family 63
words which is made of hymen, meaning a skin,
and pteron, a wing, skin- winged insects. These
are the bees, wasps, ants and saw-flies. The bodies
of the butterflies and moths are soft, while those
of the bees, wasps and ants are hard and more like
armor.
The butterflies' wings are very big compared
to the hymenoptera and their mouths are especi-
ally made for them, a style of their own, what
naturalists would call " highly specialized."
The young butterflies are worm-like babies
(larvae) and all these things, according to natural-
ists, go to show that our gaudily dressed idle but-
terflies do not move in the same circle of high-
brows as do the bees and ants, that they are not of as
good a family. Their legs are little used, the arms
or fore-legs of some butterflies being little more
than ornaments or decorations to their body and
almost as useless as the buttons on a man's coat
sleeve or at the back of his frock coat.
Our lepidoptera, our moths and butterflies, are
essentially airmen and not hikers; even with a big
handicap in their favor, the laziest ant would leave
them far behind on a hike.
When you go into the business of caterpillar
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
farming and raise a lot of these greedy creatures,
you will find that they often show a high order of
insect sense, but the caterpillars seem to leave all
the sense they have in their chrysalides and the but-
terflies themselves are not remarkable for their
brains not nearly as remarkable as they are for
their beauty; brains and beauty do not seem always
to go together.
But when you start to capture a butterfly and
to pursue him across the fields, you will find that
its seemingly aimless flight is not so aimless as it
appears. The butterfly is using the same tactics
and for the same reason that a big armored cruiser
does whenever the outlook spies the periscope of a
submarine poking up above the waves. Many a
time I have been outwitted by a butterfly which I
thought would be easy to capture. Still, they have
not the brains of the wasps, bees and ants.
The ebullition of voluntary energy of the
larvae is sometimes remarkable;" but "they are
rarely footless, usually possessing from one to five
pairs of embonpoint, abdominal props, besides
three pair of corneous jointed thoracic limbs!"
That's the way some of our teachers would speak
of a caterpiUar, for it is much easier to spill these
The Butterfly and Moth Family
65
words over a page than it is to find simple ones to
tell the same story.
Nevertheless, boys, we are going to stick right
to the talk that we can understand as closely as
the subject will allow us. To swallow two such
words as Heterocera and Rhopalocera right on
top of Lepidoptera would give any boy indigestion
of the brain and a pain in his mental turn-turn which
would unfit him for butterfly hunting and make
him dream that he had corneous jointed limbs on
his abdomen, and could never again slide down
hill belly-buster.
CHAPTER FOUR
AMERICAN SILK-WORMS AND GIANT NIGHT-
BUTTERFLIES, MOTHS, OR MILLERS
Xo matter how careful naturalists may be to
explain what a moth is, all people who are not
naturalists will continue to think that there is only
one kind of moth, the kind which eats up clothes.
Xight-buttertiies is too long a term, but the chil-
dren's name of miller is short, easily remembered,
and generally understood; besides, the insect is
called a miller because it is apparently covered
with dust. So we shall adopt that term. Fig. 67
shows the caterpillar, Fig. 68 the cocoon, and Fig.
69 the miller.
It is what you might call a sporting proposi-
tion and great fun to collect millers. The surest
way to get good specimens is to raise the cater-
pillars from the eggs and feed them upon the leaves
they delight to eat. This you will find exceed-
ingly interesting. Another good way is to go out
and hunt the big caterpillars; trail them as ele-
phants in Africa were trailed, by the spoor. This
develops observation and the same sort of wood-
66
67
LUNA MOTH, CATERPILLAR, AND COCOON.
MEW YORK
["OR, LENOX AND
IEN FOUNDATIONS.
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 69
craft for the hunter as that possessed by the In-
dian. The big caterpillars of the giant millers, as
a rule, feed upon shrubs or trees, and their drop-
pings may be discovered beneath their pasture.
LUNA MOTHS OR MOON MILLERS
The handsomest of all our millers is the Luna
or moon miller, the big, pale-green, swallow-tailed
miller which comes from a great juicy caterpillar,
the sort of caterpillar that makes a woman " throw
a fit." Of course by this we do not mean that the
ladies will fall down on their back, kick their heels,
and froth at the mouth whenever they see a baby
moon miller, but many of the ladies do squeal, and
make a great fuss at the sight of one of these
caterpillars.
I have captured Luna moths in the scrub pines
and sand wastes of Georgia out of sight of any
oak, walnut, hickory, or chestnut wood; I have
caught them on the shores of Lake Erie in north-
ern Ohio, also in New York City. There are plenty
of them around my farm near Danbury, Conn.,
and I have seen hundreds of them in the woods
surrounding my log cabin in Pike County, Penn-
sylvania.
70 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
Although these night-butterflies are very con-
spu-uoiis and measure about five-and-a-half inches
across their expanded wings, with each of their
posterior or back wings lengthened out to form a
tail an inch-and-a-half or more long; still there
are many people who never saw one. That is not
all: they never will see one unless some one of you
v
boys shows them a specimen.
The larva, caterpillar, or baby of the Luna mil-
ler (Fig. 67) eats from the time it hatches from
the egg until it grows to a great fat caterpillar
the size of your index finger. It then turns pink,
or flesh-color, and gets ready to spin its cocoon.
Then it stops eating forever!
No, it does not die, it simply stops eating. Of
course, when the pupa, or chrysalis, is locked up
in a cocoon, it cannot eat. When, later on, it cracks
the pupa shell and crawls out a winged insect, it
is too dainty and too beautiful to engage in any
such common and vulgar pastime as eating. It
simply lives on what it ate while it was a common
despised worm.
When the mother moon miller lays her eggs on
the underside of leaves or on twigs, the eggs are as
white as those of white Leghorn hens, but later on
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 71
they turn gray. When very young, the caterpillars
are a sort of yellowish green, with the last division
of their bodies, called the anal plate, of a bluish
tinge. The caterpillars feed on the leaves of the
oak, hickory and walnut, and I have seen them on
chestnut trees. They become fully grown by the
end of July.
The larva is of a pale and very clear bluish-
green color. It has a yellow stripe on each side
of the body. It is addicted to warts, and there are
as many as six pearl-like warts of a purple or
rose color on each ring of its sausage-shaped
body; like the warts you often see on a person's
face, the ones on the caterpillar are furnished with
a few little hairs. When the caterpillar is not
stretching itself, it is nearly as thick as your
thumb ; it is then a short, stumpy creature, but when
walking it will stretch to three or more inches in
length.
When kept in confinement, these caterpillars
are subject to a sort of spotted fever. Of times
black spots will appear on their bodies, and then
they will die. But if they live to the age of fifty-
five (days, not years) they will turn pinkish or
flesh-colored.
72
i ~
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
At this stage of their growth I have often
seen them in the beaks of scarlet tanagers (Fig.
70), which fact tells us that the scarlet tanager is
one of the agents whose duty it is to keep these
caterpillars in subjection. The usually brilliant
red bird at this season of the year is moulting, but
that does not interfere with its appetite. The
bird's plumage has a moth-eaten appearance and
some may think that its appetite is as disreputable
as its plumage. I have seen tanagers seize the
great fleshy caterpillars of the Luna miller, pinch
and squeeze them with their bills, maul them on
the limb of a tree, until the whole inside was re-
duced to a jelly-like liquid. Then the bird would
insert its bill into the body of the larva and drink
the contents with the same symptoms of delight
that a boy shows when sucking an orange.
The Luna is a beautiful, graceful, and artistic
moth. The scarlet tanager is one of the hand-
somest, if not the most beautiful, of our northern
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 73
birds. Nevertheless there is no accounting for
tastes, and we must own that the baby Luna mil-
ler, lunawurst, does not look appetizing to every
one. It is even doubtful if the most enthusiastic
of naturalists would be tempted to eat one,
although many will eat leberwurst, which looks no
better (Fig. 71).
When the Luna miller spins its cocoon, it either
draws a few leaves together on a tree, then makes
zi
its thin cocoon between the leaves, or it creeps
down the trunk of the tree and wanders off among
the leaves on the ground, and there spins its cocoon.
At any rate, after the leaves have fallen in the
autumn, the cocoons may be often found by rak-
ing up the leaves under the tree.
There is something queer about the Luna's
cocoon. It is noisy ! It sounds funny to say that a
cocoon is noisy, but apparently the pupa or chrys-
71 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
alls inside the cocoon is nervous or impatient, and
kicks against the confinement in its cell, wiggles
and squirms in its prison, so that a lot of cocoons
stored away in a box will sometimes produce a
noise like that made by shrews, star-nosed moles,
or white-footed mice, when they are searching
among the dried leaves for food.
Like all the millers or moths, the Luna has
many enemies; but I was surprised to find that
the dragon-fly or devil's darning needle was one
of them. A few years ago I saw a big devil's
darning needle make a dash and capture a big
Luna miller while the latter was in flight.
The cocoon of the Luna has not the loose end
possessed by the cocoons of some of the other big
millers. The Luna is sealed inside its cell; but it
possesses a special chemical fluid which it uses for
softening the threads of which its prison is made,
so that it can work its way through the soft spot.
The family to which the Luna belongs, as a
/ c? - 7
rule, spreads its wings when at rest. Very few
of them fold or turn their fore-wings backward so
as to cover their hind- wings and their bodies. None
possess the hook-and-eye arrangement for holding
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 75
the fore and hind wings together which you find
among some of the other moths.
There are several kinds of caterpillars in
Aiierica which spin excellent silk and it has been
claimed that the silk of the American silk-worms
is every bit as good as that of the celebrated Tus-
sah silk-worm of India and China, the Pernyi silk-
worm from Manchuria or the Yama-Mai of
Japan. The Luna moth, or caterpillar, belongs in
the family of American silk-worms, but the Luna
caterpillar is stingy with its silk and makes a thin
cocoon.
All the caterpillars of the American silk-worm
family are as naked as a September Morn, but not
nearly as pretty, because they have as many warts
as an old witch and these warts have short hairs or
branching prickles on them. Some of the cater-
pillars make their cocoons on the ground and some
of them fasten their cocoons to the branches of
the trees, as does the
GIANT CECROPIA MILLER
There is another giant miller of the silk-worm
family and one that is more generally known than
the beautiful Luna miller, and this is the Cecropia,
7d Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
whose big brown cocoon we see lashed to the bare
twigs of the maple and other shade trees in the
winter time.
The Cecropia moth (Fig. 74) is larger than
the Luna; some specimens will measure six and
one-half inches across the wings. The hind wings
are rounded and do not end in tails like those of the
Luna moth ; the general color is of a reddish brown ;
they are very fuzzy and their bodies look as shaggy
as those of Shetland ponies.
In the middle of each wing is the peacock-
feather eye. You will find this beauty spot all
through nature; the Luna moth has it, but not so
well marked as the Cecropia. Some fishes have it,
also some flowers and birds. The jaguar and the
leopard have it on their fur; in fact, it is used so
frequently that one is almost tempted to think that
it is Old Mother Nature's private seal, totem or
brand.
The Cecropia caterpillar (Fig. 72) is another
green sausage-shaped creature generally classed by
the boys as a ' : tomato worm " or ' : tobacco worm,"
that is because all caterpillars look alike to the boys
until they have made a study of them.
The baby Cecropia feeds on box elder, apple,
Cecropia Caterpillar, Cocoon and Miller
r
W YORK
ASTOR, LENOX A'JD
TILDE N FOUNDATION. S.
C
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 79
wild cherry, maple, willow and plum trees and cur-
rant and barberry bushes. The mother Cecropia
will lay between three and four hundred eggs in a
week's time. She lays her eggs on leaves, those
watched in confinement being said to have deposited
their eggs upon the upper side of the leaves.
The eggs are of a pinkish-white in color, more
or less daubed with the reddish-brown glue with
which the mother moth sticks the eggs to the leaves.
It takes a little over two weeks for the eggs to
hatch.
The young caterpillar is of a decidedly yellow
color and has a row of warts on its back looking
like minute specimens of the Southwestern cactus
plants set in a garden row. The baby is full grown
by the first of September and will then measure
three or more inches in length; it is entirely of a
light-green color and it has two balloon-like red
warts, studded with a dozen short black bristles,
located on the second ring ; the two warts on the top
of the third ring are a little larger but otherwise
the same as the ones described. Then come the
yellow warts, egg-shaped and bristled. On the
eleventh ring there is one big wart and on each side
of the body there are two rows of light-blue warts.
80 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
Warts seem to be the favorite decorations with
these creatures. There is another row of warts
below the blue ones on the first five rings.
In the insect world the female is the bigger and
more important of the two sexes, as she has to
furnish storage room in her body for hundreds of
eggs and see that at last the eggs are properly
placed. Like the Luna miller, neither Mr. nor Mrs.
Cecropia eat any food after they become moths or
millers. The female is so much heavier and stockier
than the male that you can ofttimes tell by the
weight of the cocoon whether it is going to produce
a female or male moth. The cocoon (Fig. 73) is a
well-finished silken sleeping-bag, the outside is
waterproof and inside of that is a loose fuzzy silk
to keep out the cold and then the rounded egg-
shaped cell which contains the mummy-like pupa or
chrysalis.
These cocoons must be well made because the
caterpillars go into them, change to the pupa form
and stay there through all the storms of winter;
the moth does not come out until the next summer.
But even then she would not be able to get out of
her prison cell if Mother Nature had not provided
her with some of that chemical fluid which softens
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 81
the glue and threads of the inner cell so that the in-
sect can push its way through. The small end of
the outer cocoon is very loosely woven and the
threads hold together, or rather spring together,
with their own elasticity, so that all the moth has
to do is push her head against them from the in-
side and crawl out into the big, big world!
POLYPHEMUS MILLER
The Polyphemus miller (Fig. 75) is of a shade
between yellow and brown; it also has Mother
Nature's beauty spots, or peacock-feather eye spots
very distinctly marked on its hind- wings; they are
transparent and called window spots; there are
also smaller ones on its fore-wings. The band
around the front margin of the fore-wings and
near the outside edge of all the wings is of a grayish
color. Near the outside edge of both pairs of wings
is a pink-edged dusky band. There is also a dis-
jointed reddish line with white or pink edges run-
ning across the fore-wings. The transparent win-
dow spot has two panes of glass in it, so to speak ;
that is, it is divided by a vein running through it
and is enclosed in a window sash composed of yel-
6
S3 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
low and black rings. The wings themselves spread
bi-t \uvii rive and six inches.
There is no race suicide among the Polyphemus
moths. In Vol. 1 of the American Naturalist a
writer tells his experience in raising a million of
The Polyphemus Miller.
these caterpillars in one season! Mamma Poly-
phemus either lays her eggs one at a time, or two or
three together, usually sticking them to the under
side of leaves. The eggs are larger than the
Cecropia eggs and it takes about tw r o weeks for
them to hatch. When the baby Polyphemus
hatches out of the little egg, it sometimes runs
around like a newly hatched chicken, with part
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 83
of the egg-shell still on it and it often has to turn
around and grasp the fragment of the shell with
its teeth (?) before it can pull it off.
The babies have five suits of clothes before they
go into their cocoons, that is, they change their
skins or molt five times and each time they get a
new suit of clothes it is several sizes larger than
the old suit.
You see it is this way: These little children
eat greedily and grow rapidly, but the skin does
not grow and at length it becomes too tight to hold
them; then they crack it open and crawl out; a
simple thing to do, but "All the king's horses and
all the king's men could not put them back" into
their skins again.
The little babies at first are inclined to be red-
dish in color, but after changing their clothes they
assume a greenish hue, bluish-green above and yel-
lowish-green below. The Polyphemus caterpillar
is another one of the " German sausage " type
(Fig. 76). It is green and has bias or diagonal
white stripes on its sides. On the last division it
has purplish-colored V-shaped decorations. All the
different divisions of the body are decorated with
yellow warts, which naturalists call tubercles. As
S i Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
the babies grow, their colors vary ? but green is the
constant tendency.
When you disturb one of the big caterpillars
it will gnash its teeth like a woodchuck or a bull
76
79
80
elk. Of course you know that the caterpillar has
no real teeth, but the horny parts of its mouth
with which it bites, known as mandibles, are rubbed
together, making a grating noise like that produced
by gnashing teeth.
If the writer has hinted that some caterpillars
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 85
are not very handsome creatures, or has suggested
that the ladies are afraid of them, he must take it
all back because his attention has been called to
the fact that two splendid women, keen observing
naturalists, Ida Mitchell Eliot and Caroline Gray
Soule, both declare that
the Polyphemus baby is
very pretty indeed, and
that caterpillars with
lustrous red warts are es-
pecially clean looking and
attractive. That is fine!
Attractive caterpillars!
Well, this shows that it is
unfair to lump the ladies
all in one bunch. The
writer humbly apologizes
for making fun of either
the women or the cater- Polyphemus COC oons.
pillars and owns up that both are beautiful.
The Polyphemus caterpillar feeds on the leaves
of the plum, elm, apple, maple, basswood, butter-
nut and oak trees. The cocoon (Fig. 77) is made
of one silken thread and it is not difficult to unwind
it. The cell is " oval cylindrical " and covered with
8G Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
a kind of white powder. The cocoon is usually at-
tached to a curled leaf or two. This is done either
on the ground or the trees from which the leaves
fall. If the reader does not know what " oval
cylindrical " means, he can find out for himself by
cutting two hard-boiled eggs (Figs. 78 and 79), in
half and then taking the halves with the blunt or
biggest ends and fitting them together (Fig. 80).
This will make an egg with both ends alike an
egg which might be called " oval cylindrical."
PROMETHIA MILLER
When you are on a hike in the winter time, fall,
or early spring you can find the cocoons of the
Promethia moth hanging to boughs and branches
(Fig. 83), to which they are attached by stems of
pliable silk. These cocoons are easily plucked by
breaking off the twig to which they are attached
and are a favorite specimen with young collectors,
who take the cocoons home with them, put them in
a vase or some receptacle on the mantelpiece and
leave them there until beautiful moths come out.
The millers (Fig. 81) are dark, blackish color
with very faint transverse lines and a spot near the
centre of each wing, sometimes very faintly marked
PROMETHIA MILLER, CATERPILLAR AND COCOON.
i U f\ i\.
P ;' r
TILDEN F<
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 89
and sometimes not at all. The front wings of the
male differ somewhat from the front wings of the
female, the apex, or point, having more of a hook
to it.
The caterpillars (Fig. 82) grow to be about
two inches long, are of a pale bluish-green color
with the legs and shield of yellow; they have shiny
black warts, except on the second and third front
divisions, where there are coral red ones. There is a
wart of similar size and yellow in color on the
eighth amidship division, or abdominal segment.
The caterpillars feed on the lilac, ash, wild cherry,
azalea, and button-bush. The eggs are pinkish-
white and are deposited in single rows.
CYNTHIA MILLER
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
and so would a Cynthia caterpillar. Cynthia, how-
ever, is a pretty name in itself and the baby Cynthia
larva? are pretty babies (Fig. 84). They have a
white bloom on their bodies like a ripe plum and
give out a pleasant odor. But the bloom and the
fragrance would still be there, even if we called the
things " worms." We must not do that, however,
because the caterpillar is not a worm; one might
90 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
'ust as well call snakes eels because both have long
M"i<>'<>-lv bodies or call earth-worms caterpillars.
."">-> .
Vou see most people talk too carelessly to describe
a thing accurately.
The Cynthia lays about three hundred and fifty
white eggs early in May and in common with other
mother millers sh sticks her eggs, like postage
stamps, to the leaves or branches, using a brown,
rummy glue of her own for the purpose and care-
lessly smearing her white eggs with it. In two or
three weeks' time the baby Cynthias hatch out and
begin to eat and change their clothes and eat more
and change their clothes more often as they grow.
Xot only are the Cynthias handsome caterpil-
lars, but they are also so economical that they do
not like to waste anything, so in spite of the fact
that all the leaves of the trees are handy for them
to eat, they always eat up their old suit of clothes
rather than throw it away. Like Robin Hood, they
dress in green and their costume is ornamented
with black dots, a white bloom and a row of white
tubercles (Fig. 84).
The Cynthias have six legs up in the bow, so
to speak, then a bunch of soft, fat piano-stool sup-
ports amidships and a pair of soft props at the
THE CYNTHIA CATERPILLAR, COCOON AND MILLER.
84, BABY; 85, WATERPROOF COCOONS; 86, PERFECT INSECT.
Thb JNhW
HRITf T TT^13 A R"
ASTOR, LENOX AND
flLDEN FOUNDATIONS.
Silk- Worms and Giant Night -Butterflies 93
stern. The piano-stools and the stern props are
not considered to be real legs, and they disappear
when the caterpillar turns into a moth.
The Cynthia cocoons (Fig. 85) are bound to
the twigs by yellowish-white silk ribbons, the twig
to which the cocoon is attached being itself first
carefully wrapped for many inches with silk, then
the leaves and leaf stalk holding the cocoon securely
bound to the twig. Great bunches of these cocoons
often hang together; sometimes there will be a
cluster of as many as twenty cocoons on one small
branch. In these swinging sleeping-bags the pupse
spend the winter safely protected from the storms
of ice, sleet and snow, but not from all foes, be-
cause the hairy woodpecker may sometimes be seen
hanging on to a twig hammering away on the
silken covering of the cocoon. The sharp beak of
the woodpecker makes a hole through the cocoon's
walls and the skin of the pupa itself, then the bird
laps or sucks out all the insides and leaves only
the dry shell.
The Cynthia moth (Fig. 86) could not join
the Sons of the Revolution nor the Colonial Dames
because he or she does not come of early American
stock. The Cynthia originally was a Chinaman,
94 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
but like all other immigrants he has made himself
at home here, and although I believe the Cynthia
fed exclusively on the ailantus tree in China, it will
feed here on the sycamore, spicewood, dogwood,
plum, wild cherry and other leaves. As a boy, the
writer never called these moths Cynthias, he only
knew them as the ailantus moths, but Cynthia is a
good name for them and one easily remembered.
The miller measures from four and one-half to
nearly six inches from tip to tip, is a sort of olive-
green in color, peppered over with black scales,
with a lilac band across the wings and the other
bands white with a tinge of lilac. The half moons
or crescents are yellow and nearly transparent.
They have nature's beauty spots, the peacock-
feather eye spot, near the tip of the fore-wings and
the body has white tufts on it.
The millers do not eat; they could not if they
tried to do so, because their mouth parts are un-
finished. They have no tongue, or the tongue they
have is a sort of a make-believe affair, a hold-over
from the time when they once had tongues which
now are of no more use than the buttons on the back
of a man's coat.
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 95
10 MILLER
" Once on a time, when dogs ate lime, and
peacocks chewed tobacco," there lived a certain
goddess whom the Romans called Juno, the Greeks
Mother, Father, Baby and Cocoon of lo Moth Miller.
called Hera, the Etruscans called Uni and some
other pagans called lo. This same lo or Hera
was of strong, hearty, rebellious character and full
of intense hatreds; that is, according to the poets,
and the poets are about as truthful as the ancient
96 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
religions handed down by the priests of those
days. None of their stories would hold in court
to-day. Some say lo was the sister of Zeus, some
say she was the wife of Zeus and others that she
was the wife of the Egyptian king named Osiris.
But of one thing we are certain, lo is classical and
hence deserves to have something named after her,
and it is probably because lo was a dangerous
woman that the dangerous caterpillar is called lo.
When we say " dangerous caterpillar," the
reader must not think that the caterpillar is going
to bite or kill the collector, but it can make it very
disagreeable for any one who handles it because of
the poisonous quality of the prickles on its back
(Fig. 87).
The baby io is hatched from peg-top-shaped
eggs, which are deposited in groups on dog-
wood, sassafras and bayberry bushes. The cater-
pillars do not look like those previously described,
the big harmless caterpillars, and the io does not
suggest a sausage, but scientists have placed it in
company with the big silk-worms.
The caterpillars are pea-green in color and
decorated with hedgerows of green poisonous
prickles. They have dark brown stripes, edged
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 97
below with white on each side of their body. The
stripes begin at the fourth department, segment,
or ring, and end at the tail ; the green thorn bushes
on its body are tipped with black and are all of
the same length; there are about thirty thorns to
each bush, all springing from a common centre,
and there are about six of these bunches of stinging
spikes on most of the rings. But on the last two
rings there are only five and on the first four there
is an additional cluster on each side near the
bottom.
The pretty io moth, butterfly or miller (Figs.
89 and 90) is much smaller than the giant moths
already described, but for other reasons it is placed
in the group containing the giant silk-worms.
When I was a big boy, by much research and in-
quiry I found that the name of this miller was
then Saturnia io, but there is not much use in load-
ing one's head up with scientific names be-
cause they do not last long ; since then I have heard
it called Hyperchiria io and Antomeris io, and by
the time my readers are as old as the writer it
may be called after Jupiter's spectacles or Mars's
binoculars, but io will probably stick, so we will
98 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
call it the io miller, which is the grown-up io
caterpillar.
Mr. Io (Fig. 89) is smaller than his wife (Fig.
90) and not so gaudy, but he has nature's beauty
spots on his two hind wings, these spots, however,
being much brighter and larger on Mrs. Io. The
gentleman and lady differ both in color and size.
The gentleman is of a deep Indian yellow with
two wavy lines running bias across its fore-wings
toward the back edge, zig-zagging near the bot-
tom; these lines are of a reddish-purple color.
The back wings or second wings next to the
body are purplish-red, and near the back edge
there is a curved band of the same color. The
beauty spot is made by a big blue blot with a black
border and a simple dash of white, and the beauty
spots on the skirts of lady io are much larger
than those on gentleman io's coat-tails. When
these moths are at rest they fold up their wings
over their back, making a roof like that of a house,
in place of spreading them out flat, as do the
moths previously described.
The caterpillar spins a cocoon (Fig. 88) on
the ground, picking up leaves and rubbish of any
kind and fastening it to the cocoon. The cocoon is
Silk- Worms and Giant Night-Butterflies 99
thin, of a very gummy brown silk, and as soon as
the cocoon is finished the caterpillar is changed to
a chrysalis and thus it sleeps all winter, coming
out about June or July the next summer to mate,
lay eggs and hatch out a new crop of poison cater-
pillars, tiny little fellows with black heads and tan-
colored bodies who march along like soldiers fol-
lowing a leader to get their rations and march back
again when they are through. They keep up this
military formation until they think they are big
enough to go off scouting on their own hook.
CHAPTER FIVE
AMERICAN ROYALTY
ALL you boys who read American history know
that on December 16, 1773, the British government
took the taxes off everything except tea, then tried
to force the Americans to become tea drinkers.
The result is that the United States has ever since
been a coffee-drinking country!
A lot of our ancestors dressed up as Indians
and threw all the tea overboard in Boston Harbor.
The British Admiral Montague poked his head out
of the window, as the make-believe Indians went
by, and cried, You've had a fine night for your
Indian caper, but you will have to pay the fiddler
yet ! ' To which our husky forefathers replied,
' Just come out here, and we'll settle the bill in
two minutes."
You boys should be proud of those ancestors;
they were a spunky lot and when they threw the
tea overboard they thought they threw everything
relating to kings and royalty with it, but they were
mistaken, for right here in America we have native-
born emperors and a royal family !
100
American Royalty 101
With a republican form of government and
under the democracy of Thomas Jefferson, this
royal family thrives and no one begrudges them
their title and no anarchists throw bombs at them.
They are forest kings and belong to the royal
family of millers ; they are first cousins of the giant
silk-worms.
The caterpillars have horns on the second and
sometimes on the third divisions of their bodies.
They live on the leaves of the forest trees and bury
themselves in the ground when they feel the change
coming over them warning them that they are soon
to take the chrysalis form.
EMPEROR MILLER
The first member of this family is the Emperor
miller (Fig. 91) . It has a spread of wings of four
to five and a half inches, and is a beautiful sulphur
yellow with purplish or violet color specklings or
markings. I believe its present scientific name is
Eacles Imperialis, but you need not try to remem-
ber this name, for, although it is its scientific name
to-day, no one can tell what its name will be to-
morrow. But the common name, Emperor moth,
or Emperor miller, will probably stick to it always.
102 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
The baby Emperors are good-sized cater-
pillars, which are ripe, so to speak, in autumn
(Fig. 92). Sometimes the caterpillars are brown
and sometimes green, sometimes hairy, but more
frequently look like the one shown in the illustra-
tion. The chrysalides or pupa3 are black, stockily
built and armed with the spines or prickles which
help them to wiggle up to the top of the soil when
the miller wants to get out of its mummy case.
The baby millers will eat the needles of pine and
hemlock, also the leaves of oak and birch, sweet
gum and sassafras, hickory and numerous other
wild leaves. The eggs are laid in June after the
moth comes out of the chrysalis and mates; she
sometimes lays the eggs before she mates, but of
course these eggs do not hatch. The eggs are large
and yellow and stuck singly on the upper side of
the leaves. They hatch out in about two weeks'
time.
The Emperor miller is beautiful and one that
you should, by all means, have in your collection.
As it is not very rare, it would be well to mount
at least three of them, an Emperor and an Em-
press, with their wings extended and then another,
either an Emperor or an Empress, with its wings
half folded in their natural position while at rest.
93
EMPEROR AND REGAL MILLERS WITH THEIR LARV.E.
THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY
, LE^OX A"D
FOUiJDA '!._.
. I
American Royalty 105
REGAL MILLER
The next member of this royal family is the
Regal miller. These millers deserve their royal
title, as they do nothing for a living except eat
and wear good clothes, in truth, they wear beautiful
clothes. The Regal moth's name is Cith-e-ro'ni-a
re-ga'lis to-day, to-morrow is may be Kaiser or
Tzar regalis, but it will probably remain the Regal
moth to-day and to-morrow.
A scientific name is easily cut out and for-
gotten, but the common name is difficult to change ;
it becomes part of the folk-lore and is not easily
forgotten and I will wager that not one of my
readers will forget the name of the Emperor miller
nor the Regal miller after he has caught one of
these beautiful specimens, identified it and placed
it in his collection.
Citheronia, a Greek poet, and Regalis, royal.
Thus you see this might be written, a royal Greek
poet, but, if the royal Greek poets had horns like
the caterpillar of the Regal moth, they must have
been more comical than handsome.
The Regal moth lays large amber-colored eggs,
very much like those of the Emperor moth, al-
though they are somewhat bigger and bordered
106 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
with a red line. They hatch out in between two
and three weeks' time. The babies are fond of
butternut and ash-tree leaves. When they take
off their old suit of clothes, they eat it.
The caterpillar will grow to five inches in
length; it does not hold on to the twig with its
props (tail props) but hugs the twig with them.
Some time in August they go into a pupa or
chrysalis form.
Although the Regal miller (Fig. 94) does not
appear to be common anywhere, it always attracts
the attention of any person who meets it, and hence
it has local names. It is sometimes known as the
walnut miller, and the caterpillar is often called the
: horned hickory devil : ( Fig. 95 ) , but the horns
are only a bluff, they do not sting or hurt you.
The front wings of the moths have yellow spots
on a sort of an olive-colored background with
stripes of lead color between the veins of the wings.
The body of the insect is a yellowish brown with
yellow markings, the feelers or antenna? a bright
orange color with a tinge of brown. The moth
will measure about six inches across the wings.
There are a number of princes and grand-dukes
and all those sorts of things belonging to this family
American Royalty 107
known as the oak caterpillars. These millers are
much smaller than the Regal or Emperor. The
dotted miller is an example. There is some sus-
picion of there being a stinging quality to the horns
of the dotted miller's caterpillar. These millers are
not beautiful. They are brownish in color and
>
you will know them by the white dot on the fore-
wings.
CHAPTER SIX
SPHINX AND HAWK MILLERS, JUG-HANDLES AND TOBACCO
WORMS. NOTCH-WINGED MOTHS
SOME of the caterpillar family have acquired
the drug habit, and are what the newspapers would
call " dope fiends," but the poison seems to agree
with them and does not affect their health or their
nerves ; they wax fat upon a diet of tomato leaves,
tobacco leaves and potato leaves, all of which we
know are exceedingly unwholesome and dangerous
for human beings to eat. These caterpillars, how-
ever, even devour the poison leaves of the jimson
weed (Datura).
Jimson weed is not well known up North and
it is only of late years that it has appeared around
New York, but it is the common weed of the va-
cant lots in the Ohio valley. It has a prickly pod
of poison seed and a morning-glory-shaped blos-
som. The blossom is a great resort for bees, which
may easily be caught when they enter the flower,
by pinching up the end of the flower and imprison-
ing the insect.
The boys call the caterpillars of the Five-
108
Sphinx and Hawk Millers
109
Spotted Sphinx tobacco worms, potato worms and
tomato worms. During slavery times the negro
boys picked these caterpillars from the tobacco
plant and the overseer, following them, made the
black boys bite the heads off of all the caterpillars
that they had passed unnoticed. This, my colored
96
The Jug Handles.
informant told me, made the boys " powerful
careful."
The caterpillars have diagonal or bias stripes
on the sides and a horn on their tail called the
caudal horn, but the part about these creatures
which interests the boys most is the fact that the
110 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
pupaa of many have a curious jug-handle to them.
This jug-handle (Fig. 97) is really the case which
holds and protects the long tongue of the moths, or
the hum-bugs, as the children call them. Among
the naturalists they are known as the hawk moths
or Sphinx moths (Fig. 98).
The reason they call them the Sphinx moths
is because the caterpillar rears up its head so that
it reminded Carolus Linnaeus, the naturalist, of the
big stone sphinx head sticking out of the sand in
Egypt. The caterpillar is a large green crawler,
which grows as thick as one's finger and three
inches or more in length and reaches its full growth
between the middle of August and the first of
September (Fig. 96) ; then it crawls down the plant
and buries itself in the ground, where it changes
to the " little brown jug " form shown in Fig. 97.
The funny part about these changes which all
caterpillars are in the habit of making is that they
all occur inside the skin, then the outside skin
breaks and a new creature, entirely unlike the old
one, wriggles out of the crack, just as the butter-
fly comes out of the skin of the chrysalis.
There are a number of moths belonging to J he
jug-handle family but some have short handles
Sphinx and Hawk Millers
111
100
pressed up against the body of the chrysalis, as is
the case with the Pen-mark miller's pupa shown in
Fig. 99. Figs. 100 and 101 show the caterpillar
and moth of this miller. Some of the relatives have
no jug-handles at all.
The jug-handles are among the largest and
stoutest of the Lepidoptera.
They are the millers which we
see flying around the flowers at
night, and when their tongues are
out searching for honey in the
flowers they look so much like
humming birds and act so much
like these little befeathered mites
that they are often mistaken for
them.
There are between three and
four hundred of these millers.
One kind lives on the pine trees and others on all
sorts of leaves. A great many of them are down in
Mexico, Central America and South America.
June and July is the time you will find them at
home, flying around the flowers in the evening.
Our potato " worm ' moth belongs to the
largest ones of this family, and, although its tongue
101
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
is longer than that of a village gossip, it is short
compared to the nine-and-one-quarter-inch tongue
of one of the Madagascar moths. But we will not
have room to describe more of these millers. One
could make a big book on hawk moths alone.
NOTCHED-WINGED MOTHS
In making your collection of hawk moths, do
not forget those with the notched wings. The
caterpillars of this kind may be found on wistaria,
raspberry, oak, apple, white birch, willow, cherry,
hazel and other trees and shrubs and there are
quite a number of them. The notched wings may
be found flying around your lamp in the farmhouse
or hiding under the projections on the outside of
the house in the daytime.
The blind-eyed miller (Fig. 102) is a notched-
wing which lays bright-green shiny eggs, but the
vivid color gradually fades out before they hatch.
The babies creep out of the egg shell sometimes in
less than a week and sometimes a few days over a
week after the eggs are laid.
The little caterpillars when they come out of
the eggs are very lively when touched and will
stand up on their hind legs and jerk their heads
Notch- Winged Moths
113
in a threatening manner, as if they were going to
do all sorts of things to you, but it is all a bluff.
The caterpillars (Fig. 102%) vary from a blue-
green to a yellow-green in color and grow to be-
tween two and three inches in length. The
chrysalis case has no visible jug-handle or tongue-
case to it and the pupa is usually nearly two inches
102
THE NOTCHED- WIN
M.LLER5.
long and stockily built. The millers (Figs. 102
and 103) vary from a brown to a fawn color, the
hind wings are pink with an edging of brown,
sometimes a pink blush all over them, with maybe
a fawn-colored edge. These millers are blondes be-
cause they have blue eyes, and Irish blondes be-
cause they have very black eyelashes; in other
8
114 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
words, their eye-spots are colored blue with a black
border to them; their bodies are fawn-colored and
the gentlemen carry widely pectinated (comb-like)
antennas while the ladies carry simple antennas.
There are many other notched-wing moths, but
we will leave you to hunt them and will figure only
one more, the pretty and common Purblind Myops
(Fig. 103). Both these moths, the blind one and
the purblind one, have eye-spots on their hind
wings. The same eye-spot we referred to before
as Nature's beauty spot, but maybe Nature is using
sign language like the Indians and the Gypsies,
and this is her Swastika, her good-luck sign. The
caterpillar to the Purblind Myops (Fig. 104) has
spots along its sides like buttons. Of course it has
a horn on its tail and is fond of rearing its head
and arching its neck, so to speak, like a checked-in
horse.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SUNSHINE MOTHS. CLEAR-WING MILLERS. HUMMING-BIRD
MOTHS. THE WHITE DEATH. FRUIT BORERS
AND SQUASH-VINE MILLERS
CLEAR- WING MILLERS
ALL of us who are interested in insects have,
some time or other, been deceived by a thing visit-
ing the flowers in the daytime and having the ap-
pearance and actions of a humming bird. But
after we have been fortunate enough to capture
one of these creatures, we discover that it is not a
humming bird, but a "hum-bug;" in other words it
is a moth and belongs to the Clear- Wing tribe, the
family of moths (Figs. 105 and 107) which are
noted for their transparent wings. These millers,
when they creep out of their chrysalis or pupa or
mummy case, look very much like the hawk moths
already described or the members of the Sphinx
family of the Jug-Handle tribe.
But the clear- wing moths have their own ideas
on personal adornment and they are dissatisfied
with their wings when they first emerge, so they
buzz around until the coating of scales is shaken
115
116 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
like dust from their wings, that is, all except such
as are tightly fastened on along the edges of the
wings shown in the two types of the clear-wing
moth (Figs. 105 and 107).
Some of the smaller moths resemble wasps,
some of them look like bumble-bees and some like
joe.
the Ichneumon fly. One of the bumble-bee kind
(Fig. 108), is shown in the grasp of a white spider
and the drawing is made from a water-color sketch
which I painted while watching the white assassin
kill the bumble-bee moth. This happened near my
log cabin on the shores of Big Tink Pond in
Pennsylvania.
Clear- Wing Millers 117
I had discovered a milk-white spider concealed
in a white flower, where it made a living trap for
such insects as the flower might attract. By this
means it captured a bumble-bee moth, and the lat-
ter died almost without a struggle. A poison se-
creted by this ghostly spider, known to the moun-
tain boys as the "white death," seems to be stronger
than that of the web-making spiders. It may be
that as almost instant death is necessary to prevent
the victim's escaping when the spider has no web to
help him hold the captive a stronger poison is
necessary.
In this connection it is interesting to note that
a box filled with all sorts of live spiders by a small
boy who was making a collection, when left over
night was discovered in the morning to have but
one live specimen in it. The boy found the ' : white
death," or to be more scientific, the female Mi-su-
me'na va'ti-a nestling contentedly in the midst of
the dead bodies of its victims.
The smaller clear-wing millers are often mis-
taken for bees, hornets, etc., but as soon as one dis-
covers that they are moths, one knows to what tribe
they belong.
Unlike most of the millers, they love the sun-
118 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
shine and then they all have funny little tails like
humming birds which they can spread out at will.
The caterpillars are borers- -that is, they are the
sort of grubs which eat their way into stems and
roots of plants and feed upon the inside bark, the
wood or pith. Fig. 109 shows the grub or larva of
the squash clear-wing.
The caterpillars to the larger clear- wings (Fig.
105) are very much like those of the Sphinx moth.
Those of the smaller clear-wings (Figs. 109, 110
and 111) make their cocoons of small bits of wood,
and by the aid of their little prickles on their
chrysalis shell they work their way out of the cocoon
(Fig. 106) and also part of the way out of the tree
trunk, if they happen to be in one. When the moth
frees itself from its mummy case, it leaves the latter
sticking half way out of the hole in the wood.
These bee clear-wings or, as Harris calls them,
^gerians, fly only in the daytime. They love the
bright sunshine and are gaily colored with yellow,
black and red, although some of them are not con-
spicuous because of the smalmess of their size.
Fig. 110 is the squash- vine miller. It has an orange-
colored body spotted with black, a pair of cowboy
Clear- Wing Millers 119
chaps on its legs made of long orange- and black-
colored hairs. Its wings spread about one and
one-half inches; only its hind wings are transpar-
ent. Some call this miller the porch vine .ZEgeria.
The cherry-tree miller (Fig. 112) does its most
damage when the larva bores into the roots of the
trees. The miller has all four wings transparent,
but the framework and borders of the wings are
steel blue, this being also the general color of the
body of the male insect, the wings of which spread
about one inch. But his wife, if not the better of
the two, is the larger ; her front wings are not trans-
parent and she wears a broad, fashionable girdle
of orange color around her body and can spread
her wings half an inch further than her husband.
The little villain shown by Fig. 113 is an enemy
of our pear trees. The wings of this little marauder
do not spread much over a half an inch, are fringed
and veined with purple-black and the front wings
have a wide dark band with a coppery glint to it.
The back of the moth is a dusky or purple-black
color, its under side is of a golden yellow and it
wears a golden collar and golden epaulets. It also
has a yellow tail and a yellow girdle across the
120 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
middle of its body with two yellow rings of the
same color.
There are other millers belonging to this family,
millers which love to destroy the wild currants and
lilac and other plants, useful and ornamental, but
we have given these little pests as much room as we
can spare.
CHAPTER EIGHT
UNDER-WING MILLERS. TIGER AND LEOPARD MILLERS.
YELLOW BEARS. HOBO CATERPILLARS
UNDER-WING MILLERS
OFTEN when one is walking through the woods
on the look-out for specimens, one may discover
some moths upon the trunks of the trees. When
the wings of these moths are folded, they are in
color and marking so similar to the bark upon which
they rest that they are easily passed by unnoticed.
But the moment they spread their wings, all con-
cealment is lost, for their underskirt, so to speak, is
often a very brilliant and beautiful one. Hence
they are known as under- wing millers.
In making a collection of these millers, one
should secure enough of them when possible to
enable one to preserve some specimens in their
natural position of rest with folded wings on a
piece of the bark of a tree, and others with their
wings extended showing their beautiful underskirt.
Fig. 114 (Catocala relicta) is the gray-backed
under-wing. When the wings are folded it has
the appearance of a piece of gray bark, but when
121
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
they are open it shows the under-wing of a sort of
chestnut color marked by two white bands. Fig.
115 (Catocala concumbens) is the light-red under-
wing. The upper wings or front wings are of a
brownish tinge, but the under-wings are red with
an outside margin of yellow, then crossed by two
dusky bands. Fig. 116 (Catocala ultronia) is the
deep-red under-wing, the upper wings of which are
darker than those of Fig. 115, in fact the whole
moth is darker ; it also has a yellow scalloped border
upon the edge of the under-wing, the deep-red
surface of which is marked by two dark bands.
Fig. 117 (Catocala gracilis) is the one-banded yel-
low under-wing and Fig. 118 (Catocala arnica) is
the two-banded yellow under-wing. These two
moths are very much the same color, but as you
may see, they are marked differently. They are
all called Catocala moths, unless the name has been
changed since the writer collected them. They are,
however, still known as the under-wings.
BEAUTIFUL BELLA MILLERS, TIGER AND LEOPARD
MOTHS
Around the bed-room lamp in the old farm-
house is one of the best hunting grounds for the
its
n~IT"DT TP T
Tiger and Leopard Millers 125
collector of moths or millers. These insects seem
to be possessed of the idea that they must commit
suicide and they will even drop down the chimney
of the kerosene lamp.
Among the tent caterpillar moths, under- wing
moths, gypsy moths and brown-tailed moths, one
will find the beautiful Bella (Fig. 119), a miller
that spicids between one and one and three-quarter
inches. This so-called tiger moth, with the rest of
the group, differs in appearance from the under-
wing moth principally because its upper skirts as
well as its underskirts are beautifully decorated.
You will find the beautiful Bella any time from
the middle of July to the first part of September.
It has naked feelers or antennse. Its front wings
are of a deep yellow, decorated with about six white
bands and on each band is a row of black dots. Its
under wings are light red with a border of black.
It has a white body and the thorax is dotted with
black.
The caterpillar may be found late in July and
August in the seed pods of the rattlebox. It is
yellow with black and white rings (Fig. 120) and
the pupa or chrysalis remains a week or ten days
in that state before the moth hatches. From all
126
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
accounts the caterpillar seems to favor the Pulse
family of plants, that is, plants with seeds in
a pod like peas and the beautiful wild blue lupin
(Fig. 122).
It gnaws a hole in the pod (Fig. 120), creeps
HO
in and hides itself and there, undisturbed by birds
or man, devours the green seeds. So well con-
cealed is the caterpillar that the great authority on
insects, Dr. Harris, says : " The caterpillar is un-
Tiger and Leopard Millers 127
Known to me." That means that the Doctor did
not find one, but I have no doubt you boys can.
The beautiful Bella belongs with the group of
so-called tiger moths, but in reality the spotted
ones should be called leopard moths, because tigers
are not spotted and leopards are. We will, how-
ever, not quarrel with this name because at least
one of the moths is called a leopard miller (Fig.
128). They are all of them pretty and add to the
beauty of a collection and most of them are easily
caught around the lamp at night. The caterpillars,
as a rule, belong to the hobo class- -that is, they
seem to have no permanent abiding place. You
meet them hustling along the roadside and in the
paths, apparently travelling in any and every
direction, and maybe if we could hear them and
understand caterpillar language, they would be
found to be singing:
" We-e-l, I ain't got no reg'lar place
That I kin call my home,
Ain't got no permanent address
As through this world I ro-o-am,
An' Portland, Maine, is just the same
As sunny Tennessee,
For any old place I hang my hat,
Is Home Sweet Home to me."
128 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
ISABELLA TIGER MOTH
The Isabella miller (Fig. 124) is a dull yellow
with a few black dots on the wings, but every boy
knows the caterpillar (Fig. 123). It is the lively
crawler, colored black fore and aft, and reddish
brown amidships, and is thickly covered with a lot
of evenly clipped stiff hair. I discover to my
sorrow that in confinement this caterpillar will eat
up other more tender caterpillars, although I never
knew it to eat caterpillars protected, like itself, with
a thick coat of hair.
When cold weather approaches it hides away
under boards, sticks and stones, where it remains
sleeping until the next spring. In April or May
it makes itself a covering, using the hair of its own
body to weave into this dark oval-shaped cocoon
(Fig. 125). The moths come out in June and
July. The wings of the moth expand sometimes
as much as two and three-eighths inches. This mil-
ler finds a place in this book because every boy
knows the caterpillar and is naturally anxious to
know what kind of a moth it produces.
Tiger and Leopard Millers 129
THE YELLOW BEAR
The yellow bear, common everywhere in our
garden, is a hairy caterpillar. Unlike the Isabella,
the hairs are very uneven in length, but because it
is so common we must mention it along with the
Isabella caterpillar. Almost any sort of vegetable
seems to suit the yellow bear's appetite. The moth
is a snowy white with seldom more than three dots
/
on each wing.
THE SALT-MARSH MILLER
This is a common white miller with black dots
on its wings. Although it is called the salt-marsh
miller, it does not confine its attention to meadow
lands along the sea-coast. Every boy knows it,
but every boy does not know that the male and
female millers differ in the color of the wings. The
female is a white miller, but the male only partially
so. Only the upper part of the fore-wings of the
male are white and underneath they are yellow,
the hind-wings also being yellow.
THE TIGER-MAID MILLER
The tiger maiden wears a velvet gown of black.
The decorations of pink or yellow are formed like
9
130
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
cracks in the winter ice, some at right angles to
each other (Fig. 126) and some diagonally running
across the wing.
TIGER MILLE
THE CLYMEME TIGER MILLER
This miller can be easily recognized by the two
dusky spots on its lower wings and the oddly-
shaped dark borders to its upper wings, the wings
1Z8
^^^
themselves having a body color of tawny yellow
(Fig. 127).
Tiger and Leopard Millers 131
THE GREAT LEOPARD MILLER
This is a beautiful night butterfly (Fig. 128)
of very light color, with brownish red spots on its
thorax and fore-wings ; the hind-wings are trimmed
along their outer edge with dark spots and dark
streaks along the outer edge of the lower wings
next to the body. I believe that I have caught all
these tiger moths around the lamp at night, as well
as many others not featured in this book.
CHAPTER NINE
PESTIFEROUS MILLERS, TENT CATERPILLARS, ARMY WORMS,
DISREPUTABLE CUT-WORMS AND THE END OF
THE MOTH TALKS
TENT MILLERS
THE tent caterpillar, which forms a large cob-
web-like nest on the wild cherry and the haw bushes
in latter part of April, through May, in June and
July, often spreads from these trees to the orchards,
where it is very destructive. I have seen large
trees in Connecticut completely denuded of foliage
and every branch enveloped in a sheath of cob-
web-like silk (Fig. 129). Not only were the
branches enveloped, but there were paths running
down the trunks of trees out to the grass and
underbrush, silken roadways of cobweb material.
The truth is, these caterpillars do not seem to
be able to find their way by the stars or the sun,
and as they carry no compass they have invented
a way of their own for marking the trail. From
their mouth they spin out a thread of silk as they
creep along; when they want to retrace their steps
it is only necessary for them to follow back the
132
Tent Millers
133
line of silk they laid; doing this often makes the
well-marked silken trails.
The moths lay their eggs on twigs, surround-
ing the twig with a cylindrical bunch of from 2,50 to
400 eggs, placed side by side in perfect rows
around the twig and varnished with a gummy mat-
Apple tree denuded by tent caterpillars.
Note web on ground, trunk and branches.
ter which is supplied by the female moths and
which waterproofs the eggs (Fig. 131). These
bunches of eggs may readily be detected in the
winter when the twigs are bare.
As soon as the little caterpillars hatch in the
latter part of April and the first of May, they be-
134 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
to nest in a convenient fork of a tree. The
caterpillars all work together to make these tents,
which form retreats for them when they are not
engaged in eating, and, if you will secure a forked
stick and push one of these tents down, you will
find it contains a ball of caterpillars as big as your
two fists. As the young increase in age and size
they enlarge the tent. At certain times, depending
upon the weather, they all come out together to
eat and, when their feast is finished, they all retire
at once.
When fully grown the caterpillars (Fig. 130)
measure about two inches. They have black heads
and a black back. From one end to the other is a
whitish line on each side of which, on a yellow back-
ground, are a number of fine crinkled black lines
that, lower down, mingle together and form a
broad black stripe, or rather a row of long black
spots, one to each ring, in the middle of which is a
small blue spot. Below this is a narrow wavy line
and lower still the sides are variegated with fine
intermingled black and yellow lines which are lost
at last in a general dusty color on the under side
of the body. There is a small dusky wart on the
top of the eleventh ring and the whole body is
Tent Millers
135
thinly covered with short, soft hair. Some time in
June the caterpillars leave their nest and travel
restlessly, often creeping on one's clothes and not
infrequently entering the house in search of shel-
tered crevices where they can spin their cocoons
(Fig. 134).
132
MK5.TE.NT
Tentmaker's sleepinp-bag under
the edge of a shingle.
The cocoons are made of loosely woven silk
plastered over with a thin paste which when dried
is like lime, so when one mashes a cocoon the paste
turns into a dust of a pale yellow color. Two
weeks longer are spent in the chrysalis state before
136 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
the moth cracks the mummy case and works its way
out through the wet and softened end of the cocoon,
dries its crumpled wings and assumes the form of
Fig. 132 or 133.
ARMY " WORMS '
Every once in a while some section of the coun-
try is invaded by an army of caterpillars known
as ARMY " WORMS," but when people call a cater-
pillar a worm they are talking loosely. We have
said something about this before, but we refer to
it again because we want the boys to know the
difference between a caterpillar and a worm. The
worm family is such a big one and has so many
distant relatives included in it, that I find it almost
impossible to give you a definition. One scientist
says, ' As a rule, worms are bilateral, segmented
animals with the nervous cords either separated
or united by commissures, and resting on the floor
of the body," and so on. But I do not believe this
will help you much to understand it. If, however,
you will catch an earthworm and compare it to a
caterpillar, you will immediately see differences
which are more easily detected than the meaning
of the words just given.
The trouble is, boys, that the English language
Army Worms
137
is composed of a whole group of languages. There
is a printed language, a spoken language, the lan-
guage of the biologist,, the language of the doctor,
the language of the surveyor, and the language of
the electrician, etc., but not many
of these fellows understand each
other's language. Then there is
the language of the boys, which
very few grown people ever use,
and the scientist is one who does
not use it. But all this is to tell
you that the army ; worm ' is
not a worm!
When these caterpillars start
a campaign, they take no pro-
visions with them, but live
on the country. They will
/ */
strip every vestige of green
from the fruit top of the
oats, rye, wheat and timothy (Fig. 138) leaving
only a straight, bare stalk standing.
The sketch you have with this (Fig. 135) is
one I made from the live caterpillar while it was
chewing off the end of a timothy stalk. Fig. 138
shows a head of grain before and after the visit of
138
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
the caterpillar. It is very lucky for the people that
the army " worms ' do not often visit us.
The moth is an ordinary looking miller (Fig.
137) of a shabby yellow drab or russet color, small
white dots near the centre of the front wings and a
dusky bias stripe around the tips. It is not quite
an inch and three-quarters from tip to tip. The
fore-wings are freckled with black and crossed by a
row of black dots a short distance from the hind
edge, one on each vein.
This row of dots when it reaches the middle
of the wing curves forward, making a dusky stripe
to the tip, the wing being slightly paler and yellow-
ish along the side of the streak of dots. The milk-
white dot in the centre of the front wings is placed
upon the mid-vein, but all the markings are indis-
tinct. The hind-wings are a smoky brown with a
Army Worms
139
purplish-blue to them, the veins almost black and
the wings nearly transparent.
The full-grown caterpillar is shown by Fig. 135,
while Fig. 136 shows enlarged view of the face of
the caterpillar. The army "worm" sometimes
measures two inches in length
o
and is about as thick as a quill
toothpick. Kill the moths and
kill the caterpillars whenever
you see them. Preserve speci-
mens so that you will always
know them. Note in your record
book the names of the different
birds that you see feeding on them, and when you
say your prayers at night, in place of asking the
Lord to give you something which might not do you
any good if you had it, thank Him for not sending
any more army caterpillars and for supplying us
with birds to keep them in check.
140 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
CUT- WORM MILLEES
The tent caterpillar is a nuisance, the army
worm an aggravation, but the meanest, most un-
principled, disreputable caterpillar among the in-
habitants of the orchard and garden is the cut-
worm! This disagreeable, dark-colored, hairless
caterpillar lies hidden in the ground waiting for
one to set out a row of tomato plants, young cab-
bages or anything nice in the vegetable line in
which one takes great pride, and then at night he
sallies forth and bites off all the stems near the
surface of the ground.
Cock robin helps keep these fellows in sub-
jection and eats great numbers of them, but the
only safe way to protect the young plants from
the cut-worm is to put a little collar of stiff paper
around each stem, allowing the lower edge of the
collar to extend down into the ground.
I might say more things about cut-worms (Fig.
139 and 141), but they are no friends of mine. I
do not like their methods, in fact I do not like their
character; the cut-worm is not a fit associate for
decent people and I rank it with men who poison
pet dogs.
Most of the moths (Figs. 140 and 142) appear
Cut- Worm Millers
141
in midsummer, along in about July or August, then
they proceed to lay their eggs in the gardens, in
the meadows and the ploughed fields. Upon the
approach of winter the caterpillars (Fig. 139),
curl themselves up and sleep until the next spring
down in the earth below frost.
As soon as the dirt begins to warm up a bit,
they work away towards the surface and watch for
you or me to set out our potato vines, tomato vines,
nice rows of succulent-stemmed cabbage plants,
and when darkness comes and hides their dark
deeds they destroy all our plants. If you do not
plant vegetables the cut-worm is not at all loath to
eat your pinks and asters.
They are thick, dark-colored, disagreeable look-
142 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
ing caterpillars of a dark lead color (Figs. 139 and
141). Their chrysalides are of a bright mahogany
color and the moths come out between the middle
of July and the middle of August. There are a
number of species of these moths, but the principal
difference among the caterpillars themselves is the
difference in the degrees of their meanness.
Seriously, however, boys, if you will collect a
number of these cut-worms from the soil of your
flower garden, your kitchen garden, your potato
or corn patch, along in June or July, and put them
in the boxes of earth, they will probably, everyone
of them, immediately conceal themselves in the dirt
/
and soon change into pupa or chrysalis form and
when the moths break out of their mummy cases
you will find you have many different kinds,
although, to the careless observer, the " worms '
looked all alike.
*
CLOTHES MOTHS
This name is used for several different moths,
the larvse or young of which eat woollen clothes,
furs and feathers, and like the basket caterpillar
on our trees, and the caddice worms in our streams,
they use the material upon which they feed to
build themselves houses carried, after the manner of
Clothes Moths
143
snail shells, on their backs. Fig. 143 is a very
much enlarged view of the young clothes moth
which you will find eating the woollen clothes
packed away in dark closets not the moth itself
(Fig. 145) you must remember, but it is the larva
that does the damage. Fig. 144 shows the chrysalis
state of this pest.
The moths or butterflies are very small and
of a light buff color, with a shiny silk lustre; the
143
144
body part or abdomen is paler than the front wings
and the hind-wings are also lighter in color. It has
a luxuriant head of blonde hair and its wings are
long and fringed most beautifully with blonde silk.
When we say long wings, we do not mean that they
are great in dimension, but they are long in pro-
portion to their width.
You will find the moth flying about the house
in the latter part of April and the first part of May,
and when you seek to destroy it you will discover
that you have something to learn in the art of
144 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
hunting moths. These little things apparently
have learned from experience exactly how to dodge
and evade the human hands. When one thinks one
has certainly got the little butterfly between the
palms of one's hands and brings the latter together
with a resounding slap, it is only to find that, like
a tumbler pigeon, the moth has dropped beneath
the danger zone. One is lucky if one catches a
fleeting glimpse of the pursued as it zigzags away,
using the tactics of an Indian dodging rifle fire,
and disappears in a dark corner where search for
it will be in vain. That is, it will be in vain until
one has learned the tricks of this little enemy, then
one will look for a crevice or crack at the spot where
it disappeared, and probably with a knife blade
inserted may bring the criminal to light and well-
deserved execution.
CONCLUSION OF THE MOTH TALKS
If the reader desires to make a scientific study
of moths, he should make his collection of cater-
pillars, of chrysalides and cocoons as well as the
moths themselves. By collecting a number of the
caterpillars and preserving some in spirits, being
careful to number the vials containing them and
Conclusion of Moth Talks 145
allowing the others of the same kind to go into
cocoon state and preserving some of the chrysalides
and cocoons in spirits, numbering them the same as
the caterpillar, also allowing some of the caterpil-
lars to hatch out as moths and preserving a speci-
men of both male and female millers and number-
ing them the same as the caterpillar, the reader
will have the data necessary to completely identify
his specimens, and if he adds the eggs of the moth
on the leaf, stick or bark upon which they are laid
and preserves them in spirit, he will have the whole
life history of his specimens.
When he makes a collection of this kind and
goes into it scientifically he should secure Packard's
Introduction to the Study of Insects, and read that.
Of course he must expect to have many bruises
from knocking against the hard names he finds in
this book, but after a while his mind will become
toughened and contact with the hard names will
cease to pain him. He should also hunt up a copy
of Harris's Insects Injurious to Vegetation and
read works by such men as Leland O. Howard
*/
and J. H. Comstock, and such women as Ida M.
Eliot and Caroline Gray Soule.
Scientific books on moths and butterflies are to
10
146 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
be found in all our big libraries, and where libraries
do not exist the reader may send duplicates of his
specimens to the scientific men of the State, City
or National Museum. They are all good fellows
and will gladly identify the insects for him and
spell out the long names so that he may label them
properly.
These names are purposely omitted here be-
cause this is a book for BOYS, a book the purpose of
which is to interest the reader in the study of nature
and not to frighten him out of the glorious fields
and away from the enjoyment of the sunshine and
blue sky by building up barbed- wire entanglements
of long Latin and Greek names.
The reader may even become an authority on
the life and habits of bugs, butterflies and beetles
without even knowing one scientific name; after-
wards, when he is older, or whenever he feels like it,
he may gradually acquire such a knowledge of the
scientific names as will make the other boys speak
of him with bated breath and look upon him with
awe!
CHAPTER TEN
THE SWALLOW-TAILED BUTTERFLIES, PARSLEY "WORMS,"
ICHNEUMONS, THE GREEN-CLOUDED SWALLOW-
TAIL, THE TIGER SWALLOW-TAIL, AND
THE ZEBRA SWALLOW-TAIL.
BUTTERFLIES
You remember, back in the part of this book
where we were talking about the moths, mention
was made of the beauty spot, or nature's conspicu-
ous decoration on a lot of the millers. Some of
the butterflies also have this trade-mark (Fig. 146)
and among the swallow-tails you will find it on
the inner edge of their lower wings, just at the
top edge of the border band. It would be very inter-
esting to know why nature is so very fond of this
beauty mark, but it would have been a knotty prob-
lem for Huxley, hard for Darwin and difficult for
Mr. Wallace, or any of the rest of the evolutionists,
to give us a satisfactory explanation of the reason
that this same decoration appears upon birds, fish,
insects and mammals.
For those people who do not believe in evo-
lution and who think things just happened,
without any long series of education, preparation
147
148
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
and gradual growth- -for such people, with such
beliefs, it might be easier to account for the beauty
spot, because such persons do not have to explain,
they can simply say, It is there because it is
there." But persons who are gifted with a healthy
mUMBTWSKOTThE.
imagination, such as Indians, artists, story writers,
poets and boys, need not prove their assertions,
they can simply make the claim that these round
eye-marks which appear on so many creatures are
the thumb-marks of the Great Creator, and in one
sense they are, no matter how they may be other-
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies 149
wise explained by Darwin. At any rate we can
all agree that the Creator could hardly have chosen
a more beautiful and artistic object upon which to
register His thumb-marks than a swallow-tailed
butterfly or a Luna moth.
It is one thing to have a thought, and it is an
entirely different thing to so express that thought
that another person can understand it. Xow listen
to me a moment, boys, and see if you can under-
stand what I am going to tell you; see if you can
catch the thought which underlies the whole of this
book, by which I mean the main idea that governs
me in writing this book. A number of times I
have joked about scientists and, while I greatly
respect them, for my own purposes here I am going
to joke about them again. The particular scientists
I mean are the postage-stamp naturalists, those de-
voted students who spend all their time classifying
and sorting out dried bugs, butterflies and beetles,
indexing them and preserving them in order, as
one does a collection of postage-stamps in an
album.
These men do not and cannot tell you what a
butterfly really is, they cannot tell you why it
exists, why it lives at all! They cannot tell you
150 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
what impulse, thought, instinct or motive governs
its actions ; in fact, they can do no more than guess
at these things, as we do; they cannot answer one
real live question which any bright boy would ask
regarding the life of a butterfly.
Of course they can give you a name from a lan-
guage as dead as the specimens in your collection;
they can also tell you that the specimen was once a
caterpillar, and sometimes, not always, can tell you
what kind of a caterpillar. Frequently they can
tell you what sort of eggs the butterfly lays, where
it lays them, how long it takes them to hatch, etc.
They will also tell you that the caterpillar changes
its skin about four times in its lifetime; that after
a while it stops eating and changes into the form
of a chrysalis and then becomes a butterfly. But if
they are real postage-stamp scientists, you will not
know what they are talking about because the terms
they use are seldom heard in conversation and do
not appear in print except in dictionaries and
scientific reports.
But even if you understand what they say, you
are still as ignorant as they are of the meaning of
a butterfly! The specimen in your collection is of
the same value as a postage-stamp in an album.
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies 151
Your specimen is not a real butterfly and it bears
no more relationship to the live insect than does an
Egyptian mummy to a life-loving, rollicking wild
cowboy.
A butterfly is something more than an insect,
it is an idea,- -it is everything that you want it to
be, and it is beautiful in proportion to your ability
to appreciate and understand beauty.
What is the object of its life? What is it for?
These are questions which come to the mind of any
healthy boy ; stupid men seldom think of them, even
when they see one of these exquisite insects floating
in the air apparently as aimlessly as a piece of
tissue paper wafted on the summer breeze. Why,
boys, if we knew all the hidden secrets of the life
of one single butterfly we would know more than
any man who ever lived. But there are lots of
secrets we can discover and that is what gives charm
to our collecting hikes.
This book is written as an appeal to the sen-
sitive nature of you boys- -boys whose souls are
nearer to nature and whose spiritual ideality, if
you can understand what that means, is greater
than that of men, at least greater than that of most
men. There was once a man by the name of
152 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
Thoreau who possessed ideality, which every real
boy has. Thoreau had a warm fellow-feeling and
real sympathy for everything that lived, and the
joyous enthusiasm of a boy because he had the
clean soul of a boy.
/
You, my readers, are all Thoreaus because you
are BOYS. And it is because you are bovs I write
/ v
as I feel and not as some men would have me write
of the butterflies we see glinting in the sunlight,
flitting from flower to flower, idly loafing on a
milkweed blossom, opening and closing their wings
in their dainty, languid fashion, or collecting in
crow r ds and making blotches of moving color
around the damp places in the roads and barn-
yards.
Yes, butterflies are beautiful, they are artistic,
but there is another side to the story: they are the
good Dr. Jekylls of that famous novel and the
caterpillars are the wicked Mr. Hydes.
Everyone who is interested in forest shade trees,
in farms, in flowers, in gardens, and everyone who
thinks he is not interested in these things, but uses
wooden furniture made from forest trees, eats
vegetables, fruit and grain grown on the farms,
wears a flower in his buttonhole, uses paper on
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies 153
which to write, is depending for all these things
upon what the caterpillar spares only through lack
of numbers to consume.
We eat at the second table after the caterpil-
lars, we use what is left after his majesty the cater-
pillar has had enough. Consequently, everybody
in this world, whether he knows it or not, is depend-
ent upon the birds, principally ; also, upon some of
the bats, toads, small snakes and some small mam-
mals which eat insects, for the privilege of living
here.
Although the caterpillars are baby butterflies,
that fact need not disturb you when you are waging
war against them. Every time you catch a female
butterfly and put her in your cabinet, you have cut
off just so many hundred eggs, which means so
many caterpillars from the general supply of
marauders.
Nevertheless the caterpillar has its use and place
in the world and should not be exterminated. How-
ever, this need not bother you because you cannot
exterminate them, but unless you keep them in sub-
jection they will exterminate you! I am telling
you this, not to encourage you to kill, but so that
you may collect specimens with no scruples of
154
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
conscience; although the real nature lover dislikes
to kill, even pests.
CATERPILLARS
It is the common belief that caterpillars are
always hairy, but we have seen that among the
caterpillars of the moths many of them are naked,
and such is also the case with the butterflies. When-
ever we use the word butterfly now, we mean the
LEG-PLAN OP TUB BABY
ones which fly by day, and not the millers. The
caterpillars which turn into butterflies always have
sixteen legs. They have a pair of scaly- j ointed
legs attached to each of the first three divisions of
the body and they have four pairs of fat fleshy legs
attached to the divisions, 6, 7, 8 and 9 of the body
(Fig. 146%). These fat legs have no joints at
all to them; they are shaped something like piano
stools. Besides the fat ones they have a pair of
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies 155
prop legs on the last section of the body. All these
fleshy legs are soft and can shape themselves to
fit the branch upon which they rest. The feet to
them, if we may be allowed to use such a word
for the bottoms of these fat legs, are nothing more
than cushions. That they are not real legs, but
only artificial limbs to help the baby butterfly creep,
is shown by the fact that when the insect comes out
of the chrysalis in perfect form, there are no props
on the tail and no cushioned piano stools along
the belly.
The caterpillars to the butterflies have a habit
of hanging themselves by their tail before chang-
ing to the chrysalis form, or putting a belt strap
on around the body, so that after they have shed
the caterpillar skin and becomes a helpless mummy
the band of silk holds them to the limb of the tree
or the paling of the fence until the butterfly
emerges.
The butterfly is much shorter, as a rule, than
the miller and it also is more slender and graceful
in its body and of a livelier disposition than its
night-flying relative. It disdains a cocoon and
delights in artistic and decorative mummy cases in
which secretly to change its clothes. It, too, has a
156 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
spiral tongue (wound like a watch spring) . When
at rest, the butterfly holds its wings upright, erect,
never folds them as do a great many moths. No
bristle and socket can be found on the butterflies'
wings to hook them together during flight, like a
woman's dress, as the wings of some moths are held
together. Most of the smellers, feelers or antenna?
o
of the butterflies are knobbed on the end, although
some approach very closely to the thread-like form
which naturalists call : filiform."
THE SWALLOW-TAILED BUTTERFLIES
The most attractive butterflies are the swallow-
tails ; the so-called swallow-tails to the wings of the
butterfly are marks of distinction, as they are on the
wings of the Luna moth. There are over three hun-
dred kinds of swallow-tail butterflies known; the
three hundred does not refer to the number of but-
terflies, because one may see that many in a day.
Butterflies sometimes migrate in great flocks and I
have seen them in clouds, floating over the house-
tops of New York City. On such occasions one is
liable to see many, many times three hundred in
one day.
Among the butterflies, so far as I know, there
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies 157
are no wingless ones, but among the moths there
are some of the females which never have wings;
they are the ones to which the following misquota-
tion may apply:
I do not want to fly, she said,
I only want to squirm,
I hate to be a butterfly,
I want to be a worm.
Such moths lack ambition, but unlike many
females they cannot be accused of vanity, they do
not care for powder or paint or perfume, and that's
where they differ from the black swallow-tail but-
terfly or, as some call it, the swallow-tail papilio,
because this butterfly is powdered and painted and
uses perfume. The perfume is used only by the
caterpillar. The baby swallow-tail has " eyes and
sees not," six of them on each side of the head at
that!
It has strong jaws which open and shut side-
wise and in the lower lip there is a little tube from
which the silk or web threads are drawn or, as they
usually say, spun. This silk when it comes out,
you understand, is not in the form of thread, but a
sticky sort of juice and it drools out of the lower
158 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
lip in a small thin jet which the air hardens into
the substance we call silk.
The caterpillar of the black swallow-tail has
peculiarities all its own. You possibly know it as
the parsley " worm ' -I do not know what we are
going to do about that word worm which comes up
on all occasions ; I suppose we must use it as other
people use it, but if while doing so we understand
that it is incorrect, that in reality it is a slang word
for caterpillar, it will probably do us no harm-
the caterpillar may be found in June, eating the
leaves of the carrot and parsley. It is a naked
larva of yellow or green color, striped and spotted
with black markings.
If you touch the parsley " worm " it will defend
itself by protruding, from a slit in the first division
of the body, a delicate pair of soft orange-colored
horns which are joined together at the bottom,
making the letter V. The caterpillar will not gore
you with these horns, you can touch them with
your finger without injury to yourself; the truth
is, they are not real horns and they are only called
horns because of their position and appearance.
The V-shaped thing over the caterpillar's head
is really its vinaigrette, its perfume bottle. This
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies 159
is another case where the insect's idea of a sweet
odor does not agree with ours ; but maybe it is, as we
first hinted, used like a skunk's odor, as a means of
defense.
ICHNEUMONS
There are a number of flies, and what are called
Ichneumons, which have a very annoying and mean
way of depositing their eggs upon the surface or
under the skin of caterpillars, where the eggs hatch
out and feed upon the flesh of their living host.
Possibly this vinaigrette carried by the striped
caterpillar is used to drive away all such insects as
wish to pasture their young upon the body of the
live caterpillar, or the smell may even be so dis-
agreeable to the toads and the birds as to cause
them to refuse to eat the caterpillars. We know
the scent is there for some purpose and we know
we would not eat one of these caterpillars even if it
had no vinaigrette bottles stowed away in a pocket
in the nape of its neck, and we also know that when
we see a woman bring out a vinaigrette bottle we
must not mention parsley " worms," for that would
be ungallant.
These caterpillars are full grown in the fore-
part of July and will then measure about an inch
160 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
and one-half in length. This is the time they hunt
a sheltered spot on a tree trunk, shed or fence, there
to get ready to effect their wonderful transforma-
tion. They are dainty, fastidious creatures and
they want a footstool for their feet, so they make
themselves one of silk, but instead of standing upon
this silken stool, they hook their hind feet into it,
fasten them to the silk so that they can, if they wish,
hang head downward with no danger of falling.
But they evidently do not like to hang head down-
ward, and in order to avoid that undignified posi-
tion they spin a waistband or lifebelt, which keeps
them upright and prevents the blood from running
to their head as you will notice in the picture of the
black swallow-tail.
These butterflies not having a cocoon, like the
moth, to conceal their chrysalides, take some pride
in their mummy cases and make them of decorative
and artistic form to please the eyes of the boys or
for some purpose of their own.
The butterfly is black and is common; every
boy knows it, or if he does not, every boy has seen
it. It is graceful in form and beautiful in color.
The wings have two rows of yellow dots and a lot
of yellow half-moons along the border of the wings,
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies
101
the half -moons being known as lunules. The male
butterfly is more distinctly marked than the female,
and also smaller.
You can put it down as a rule among all insects
that the male is smaller than the female ; the excep-
tions, if any, which may occur to this rule are not
BLACK SWALLOW-
TAIL
many or important enough to affect the general
truth of the statement.
THE GREEN-CLOUDED SWALLOW-TAIL
It is also a black butterfly with yellow markings,
but if you will compare it with the black swallow-
tail you will see the difference in its markings,
11
162 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
especially in the fore-wings. If the drawing was
in color you would see that the bands on the hind
/
wings are not yellow but, as the name indicates,
clouded with green.
V~9 I' 1"J ' -.
jCGRLLN-CLOUDEDii
^SWALLOW-'
151
THE TIGER SWALLOW-TAIL
This is the butterfly we formerly called the
turner, a corruption of turnus, but since it is yellow
and striped with black, the name tiger is more ap-
propriate. This is a big, handsome, conspicuous
butterfly, expanding sometimes as much as five
inches across the wings.
The caterpillar you will find feeding on the
Swallow-Tailed Butterflies
163
leaves of the wild cherry and apple trees. The
full grown caterpillar is sometimes two and a half
inches long. It has yellow eyespots with black
centres on each side of the third ring of the body.
^j J
The upper part is of green color with rows of little
blue dots and there is a yellow and black band
across the fourth division of the body; it wears
fashionable pink stockings.
You will find the chrysalides about the first of
V
August, but you will have to keep them until the
following June before they hatch out butterflies.
The larva of all these butterflies carry vinaigrettes
164
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
with ill-smelling perfume and probably the larva
of the zebra butterfly does the same, but I am not
familiar with this caterpillar, although the butterfly
itself is an old friend.
THE ZEBRA SWALLOW-TAIL
We used to find this in the edge of the woods
SWALLOW-TAIL?
and among the boys it was known as the wood but-
terfly. There are different forms to this insect
and when referring to your notes you may notice
a difference in the time of the butterflies' appear-
ance. Their wings have stripes of greenish white,
which gives them the name of the zebra swallow-tail.
Round- Winged Butterflies 165
ROUND-WINGS
The next butterflies are the round-wings. They
C2 %
have short thick antennas with a rounded club at
the end and the point of the fore-wings is rounded
off. They are mountaineers, and after these moun-
taineers come the inhabitants of the valleys, some
/ *
familiar inhabitants we all know.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WHITE CABBAGE BUTTERFLY, YELLOW BUTTERFLY, THE
GOSSAMERS, COPPER AND BLUE GOSSAMERS, THE MON-
ARCH BUTTERFLY, THE VICEROY BUTTERFLY, THE APH-
RODITE AND MYRINA BUTTERFLIES. THE PHAETON
BUTTERFLY, AN GEL- WING BUTTERFLIES, THE L BUTTER-
FLY, THE AN-TI'O-PA BUTTERFLY, THE RED ADMIRAL,
THE BROWNIES AND THE SKIPPER BUTTERFLIES.
BUTTERFLIES
EVERY lad who has hunted butterflies is familiar
with the white cabbage butterfly, which may often
be seen in great numbers in the cabbage and turnip
patches; some of them have dusky tips to their
wings with a few dusky spots upon them, w r hile
others are white with dusky color near the body.
The accompanying illustration shows the white cab-
bage butterfly, the green larva and the chrysalis.
The caterpillar is covered with dense hair and
is of a dull-green color. Some of these caterpillars
which I kept in captivity were devoured by a law-
less Isabella caterpillar confined in the same box.-
By turning back to Fig. 123 you will see a sketch
of this cannibal.
166
.Whites and Yellows
167
THE YELLOWS
After the whites come the yellows, which are
/
almost, if not quite, as common as the white but-
terfly. These, you will notice, like the whites, have
no tails to their wings and both the fore and hind
wings are more rounded and have smoother edges
than those of the swallow-tail butterfly.
There are two broods of yellows every year,
the first coming in April or May, the last in July.
The female butterfly, in the latter part of this
month, deposits its eggs which hatch out about the
168 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
first of August. The minute hairs on the body
of the caterpillar give it a downy appearance, and
it has yellowish white stripes on each side of its
body. They feed on clover and green-pea vines.
The chrysalis has a belt of silk, like those already
described, and the head of the chrysalis is pointed.
These yellow butterflies are common as far north
as bleak Labrador and our own country roads in
summer time would not look natural without them.
There are also, by the roadsides, in the fields,
some very small butterflies which will attract atten-
tion on account of their dainty appearance, known
as gossamers. They include the coppers and blues.
THE AMERICAN COPPER BUTTERFLY
The American copper butterfly (Fig. 147) is
easily recognized by the red copperish sheen on its
fore-wings and the eight, more or less, small square
black spots. The hind-wings have a broad dusky
brown border and a wide copper-red band on the
The Monarch
169
back margin. The butterfly spreads a trifle over
an inch. You will find him among the clover and
pasture plants. The larva is a greenish-colored
caterpillar and the chrysalis (Fig. 147) is short and
dumpy in appearance, yellowish-brown in color and
peppered with small black spots.
The blue butterfly (Fig. 148) is a most at-
tractive little fellow and very beautiful. It will
spread its wings about the same distance as does
the copper butterfly.
The wings have a satiny
lustre and in the male
butterfly are an azure
blue color ; the female has
fore- wings with wide,
dusky outer margins and she has a row of black
spots on her hind-wings. The under sides of her
wings are pearl gray and the fringes are white.
If you hunt for them you will find other cop-
pers and other blues- -the Blue Lucia, for instance.
THE MONARCH
But we must skip a number of these dainty little
fairies and take our butterfly net out along the
fences and roads in search of royal game. There
170 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
we will undoubtedly find the Monarch or milk-
weed butterfly. This butterfly has a pretty chrys-
alis of bright-green color ornamented with golden
beads; you will find it sheltered under the project-
ing top of the old white board garden fence.
The caterpillar feeds on the different kinds of
.irtri-ffirftfiff
MONARCH
milkweed. It is yellow in color and has broad
bands of black. There is also a pair of thread-like
appendages growing on the second division of its
body and another pair on the eleventh division.
The butterflies are very common and, so far as I
know, do no injury to any of the garden plants or
vegetables and not any serious damage to the milk-
weed upon which they feed.
The Viceroy
171
THE VICEROY
There is another butterfly very much like the
Monarch, known as the Viceroy (Fig. 150). It is
the same color as the Monarch, but is smaller and
differently marked, the principal difference in
marking being the band on the hind wings; but
although these two butterflies look so much alike,
their resemblance is not
due to close relationship,
for the scientists have de-
clared that they belong to
different sub-families-
that is, they are about
fourth cousins to each
other. The markings and
color, however, are very
much alike. The Vice-
roy, like the Monarch, is
a tawny yellow above
and a paler yellow beneath. All the wings have a
wide black border relieved by a white spot, the veins
of the wings are black and there are triangular-
shaped spaces with white spots near the tip of the
front wings. This butterfly can spread about three
and one-half inches. The light-brown caterpillar
172 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
feeds upon the willow and poplar leaves; the young
caterpillars have an ingenious way of making them-
selves sleeping-bags by neatly joining the oppo-
site margins of a willow leaf, lining the bag with
silk and sleeping in it all winter.
THE APHRODITE
The Aphrodite (Fig. 151) is a double-brooding
butterfly, the first specimens of which you will
discover about the middle of June, and new
Aphrodites fresh from their chrysalides may be
found in the latter part of August. It has tawny
yellow wings- -that is, the males have- -while the
females have what might be called ochre-yellow,
and both gentleman and lady are of a brownish
color next to the body and near the hind edges they
have a black line. A row of black new moons
The Myrlna Butterfly 173
and black full moons on the other part of the wings
are ornamented with irregular black spots. The
Aphrodite is not in favor of a gold standard, but
on the contrary is a free- silver butterfly and be-
neath the tips of the front wings it carries seven or
eight silver marks, while concealed on the under
side of the hind- wings are twenty-odd great, silvery-
white spots. You must look for this butterfly
among the blossoms in the lowlands- -it is not a
Highlander.
THE MYRINA BUTTERFLY
The eggs of the Myrina butterfly are about the
shape of an acorn and pale green in color. The
young are hatched in about a week's time and are
full-grown at the end of the first week in August.
The head is black and shiny and coated with fine,
/
short black hairs ; the sort of grayish-brown body is
ornamented with spots and dots of black velvet.
The second segment or division (Fig. 146%) is orna-
mented with two fleshy horns ; the third and fourth
174 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
divisions each have dull white colored spines with
black tips; all the other divisions, except the last
one, have six dull white spines; there are four of
them on the last or twelfth division. It wears
black patent-leather shoes on its front feet and tan-
colored ones on its fat legs. Fig. 146% shows the
location of the fat legs.
The butterfly has tawny wings with black
border and a row of black new moons next to the
border. It spreads less than two inches across the
wings. Mr. Harris gives the figures as from one
and three-quarters to one and eight-tenths inches.
It, too, belongs to the free-silver party and is orna-
mented with silvery spots as well as black dots
(Fig. 152).
THE PHAETON BUTTERFLY
The Phaeton butterfly (Fig. 153) you must
hunt for in the swales and over damp soggy ground.
You can also look for the caterpillars in the spring,
quite early, and maybe under the leaves you will
find them hiding. The full-grown caterpillar ( Fig.
154) is armed with nine rows of black spines sur-
rounded at the tips with thick-set long spinules.
The caterpillar is ready for a minstrel show, for it
has a black face, the front part of its body is also
The Angel- Wing Butterflies
175
black, but the rest of the body is clothed with an
orange-colored garment. Along about the first of
June you may find the chrysalis (Fig. 155).
THE ANGEL- WING BUTTERFLIES
This is a pretty name which I quote from
Mr. J. H. Comstock. It is a pity that more of
our butterflies are
not named in this
style, but at the
same time, accord-
ing to the best of
our information, it
is not the angels
but the fairies who
sport butterfly
wings. We may
be wrong in this
because, to be honest, we have never, to our knowl-
edge, seen either of them.
But as an artist the author has many times
drawn pictures of angels and, taking his authority
from other artists, he has always hitched birds'
wings under the angel's shoulder-blades, not be-
cause he thought angels needed wings but because
the wings are decorative and symbols of the angel's
176 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
ability to move through space. But this point we
will not discuss because the writer of Bugs, But-
terflies and Beetles is more familiar with boys than
he is with angels, and, fortunately for school-
teachers, policemen and parents, boys do not have
wings.
The peculiarity of the angel butterflies seems
to be that when Mother Nature was using her
shears to cut out their wings, she made many
experiments and gave these butterflies all sorts of
fancy notches, scallops and curves on the edges of
their wings. The scientists would say that Mother
Nature gave them ' ' deeply incised wings."
The angel- wings are also painted with rich
reds and browns and usually they have the under
side of their hind-wings decorated with silver and
gold spangles. It may be, in order to help you
boys remember how to indicate the stops and pauses
when writing your notes, that these butterflies often
have their wings ornamented with punctuation
marks. One of them has a golden semi-colon and
one angel-wing is called the question-mark but-
terfly or, to state it more accurately, the interroga-
tion butterfly. It is a rich, reddish-brown color,
with fancy notched and tailed edges to its wings,
PUBLIC LIBRARY
.DEN FOUNDATIONS.
The Antiopa 179
which are tipped with violet and marked with dark
spots. The caterpillar may be found on the elm
trees, the hop vine and the nettles (Fig. 156) .
THE L BUTTERFLY
The L butterfly is so-called because it is
branded like a Western broncho- -that is, it carries
a silver L in the middle of the under side of its
hind-wings. The caterpillars of the L thrive on
the leaves of the hop and the elm trees. The L
butterfly (Fig. 157), is a northern variety. Fur-
ther south we have a comma butterfly, which is
branded with a silver comma in the centre of the
hind-wings ; the caterpillar of the comma also feeds
upon the hop and elm trees and the nettle.
THE ANTIOPA
The Anti'o-pa is a hyphenated American and
not a native-born citizen of our republic, but like
all the rest of the immigrants, including our own
far-distant ancestors, the Antiopa came over here
to better its condition and found here fewer ene-
mies and plenty of food and so it has thrived like
the rest of the immigrants, and become one of the
citizens of our butterfly community. The cater-
pillars play hob with the willow trees. Some weep-
180 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
ing willows, which with great trouble and some
little expense I procured and set out along the
edge of Big Tink Pond, Pike County, Pennsyl-
vania, were completely stripped of their leaves by
the larvae of this imported butterfly.
The greedy babies are black, lively caterpillars
and they live together in numerous communities,
the first brood coming early in June- -that's the
time they began on my willow trees, and two
seasons' diligent work by these caterpillars killed
every tree I had. They have black heads, with
spines sticking up from them. They have six or
seven of these jagged spines on each division of
the body. When full-grown they are an inch and
three-quarters long, and they do not look at all
pretty; in fact in olden times they were supposed
to be very poisonous and able to give you danger-
ous wounds and they certainly look like villains.
At one time, people cut down all the poplar trees
around their dwellings because they were afraid
of the Antiopa caterpillars, which feed upon the
poplar as well as the willow. Fig. 158 shows the
caterpillar, Fig. 159 shows the chrysalis and Fig.
160 the butterfly.
The Red Admiral 181
I have found the butterfly in mid-winter under-
/
neath stones which w r ere half buried in the frozen
ground. The butterflies in the fall creep edge-
wise in the crevices leading underneath these rocks,
and sleep there all winter so that they are usually
the first butterfly one sees in the spring. A real
warm spell in winter time w r ill sometimes induce
them to come forth and flit around in the sunshine,
under the belief that winter is over. The butter-
fly wings are dark purplish-brown above, with the
band along the scalloped margin of buff color. Ad-
joining, or rather just beyond, the buff edge is a
row of bluish spots. The butterfly spreads about
three and one-half inches at most.
THE RED ADMIRAL
This is another angel-w r ing, the caterpillars of
which feed on the nettles and hops (Fig. 161).
After the Red Admiral comes the cosmopolitan
Painted Beauty. This butterfly is right up to date
so far as paint and powder are concerned, but if she
does the turkey trot or the tango, she does them while
flitting through the air and without a partner. The
Painted Beauty (Fig. 162) in color is very much
like the Red Admiral, although the markings are
182
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
different, which you may see by comparing the
two sketches. Like the donkeys, the caterpillars
of these butterflies all seem to love nettles; this is
true also of the American Tortoise Shell. There
are two Tortoise Shell butterflies, the Compton
Tortoise and the American Tortoise.
THE BROWNIES
These butterflies have the eye-spots or the
" thumb mark of the Maker ' as their favorite
decoration; they are sometimes called the meadow-
browns, because
they frequent the
meadows.
The Blue-eyed
Brownie (Fig. 163)
may be found about
the first of July to
the middle of
September in the
orchards and woods. The dark-green striped and
pale-green body of the caterpillar changes to the
chrysalis form with a notched head ; the front wings
of the butterfly have a wide yellow band near the
outside edge and extending to the middle of the
wing or further. At the top and bottom of this
BLUL-E.YLD BROWN I L
The Brownies 183
yellow blotch of color are two eye-spots with blue
centres. The hind-wing is more or less scalloped
and the under side of the wings is of light-brown
color, streaked with dark brown and ornamented
with eye-spots or nature's beauty spots on the
females, but not always on the males. Up North
these butterflies will measure two and one-half
inches across the wings and a half an inch more for
the South.
BOISDUVAL'S BROWNIES
These butterflies (Fig. 164) are a pale yellow-
ish brown. Both sides of the front wings have a
row composed of four eye-marks. The eye-spots
are black with white
centres. On the back or
hind wings there are six
eye-spots, one of them on
the upper edge of each
wing and five of them
close together on the
lower edge of each wing. It is not unusual to find
some of these butterflies with blind eye-spots upon
the upper side of the wings that is, eye-spots lack-
ing the white centres.
The butterfly spreads two inches and sometimes
more. It may be found in July among the moun-
184 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
tain meadows and on the hillsides in New England.
It was named by Dr. Harris after Dr. Boisduval,
the entomologist.
There are other Brownie butterflies, which you
will know and the tribe they belong to because of
their family likeness. There is, for instance, the
Eurytris Brownie and the Nephele Brownie. But
we have given enough space to the Brownies and
to tell the truth, they do not look as much like the
little gnomes for which they are named as do the
Skippers. The Brownies are called Brownies be-
cause of their color and not because of their habits
or form.
SKIPPERS
The Skippers, however, have all the character-
istics of little dwarfs- -big heads, bulging eyes, and
short heavy-set bodies (Fig. 165). Even the baby
Skippers, the caterpillars (Fig. 166) have big
heads. These caterpillars are leaf rollers. While
making this illustration, I was unable to find on
the locust trees the larva of the Tityrus Skipper
(Fig. 165), but I found a leaf roller on a silver
poplar tree (Fig. 167), which will serve as an
illustration of the ingenious manner in which leaf-
rolling caterpillars roll up the leaves.
Skippers
185
At A, B, and C you will note (Fig. 167) that
the roll is fastened by stitches, if I may use that
term, of silk. These stitches continue at intervals
inside the leaf as it is rolled, thus holding it to-
gether in the form of a tube. Inside the tube the
caterpillar leads a hermit life, concealed from its
enemies by its food supply. This particular cater-
pillar feeds upon the edge of the silver poplar leaf
inside the roll. But when one unrolls a leaf one
finds the caterpillar to be an unsanitary house-
keeper. The larvae of the Tityrus Skipper, how-
ever, is the reverse of slovenly. The Tityrus keeps
one end of the leaf roll open as a doorway (Fig.
167), from which it is said to come out at night,
feed and return to its hiding place when the sun
rises and exposes it to the view of its enemies, the
186 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
birds. The Tityrus Skippers are good housekeepers ;
they have no dirt in their bedrooms and have a way
of throwing it out, by jerking their body and casting
the refuse quite a distance. The caterpillar of the
Tityrus feeds upon the locust trees and sometimes
makes its cocoon inside the leaf which it inhabits
(Fig. 168). But usually it seeks some safer place
and makes its cocoon of any old loose stuff it can
find, lines it with a web of silk and sleeps there
until the following summer.
The butterflies, the real true butterflies, when at
rest, bring their wings together like the leaves of a
book, holding them stiffly upright in this position.
But some of the Skippers bring their fore-wings
together upright like a butterfly, while holding
their hind wings partially open like a moth or mil-
ler when at rest. Other Skippers make no pre-
tense to holding their wings upright, but spread
them open like the moth when at rest.
They also have a tendency to make cocoons like
a moth's instead of suspending themselves in jewel
chrysalides, like the real butterflies.
The Skippers' bodies are thick and suggest the
bodies of the moths more than they do those of the
butterflies. Then you will note that their antennse
Skippers 187
are very much like the antennas of the Sphinxes or
hawk moths, and for lack of any rule to the con-
trary we will consider them the " missing link "
between the true butterfly and the miller. If they
are not, then the link is really missing.
The only serious objection to butterflies, as ob-
jects of study, is the difficulty in keeping them
alive. When one confines them in the house, they
have a foolish way of fluttering on the window
pane or beating their beautiful wings to rags on
the window screens. They make splendid objects
to preserve and are beautiful in form, texture and
color ; they add to the beauty of a collection and when
alive add to the sentiment and beauty of the past-
ure, the meadow and the garden as they flutter
in the air, but their children's energies are all ex-
pended in an effort to destroy the beauties of
nature. As caterpillars, nothing has a value to
them but food for themselves.
We cannot keep butterflies in the greenhouse
unless we are careful to secure only males, other-
wise the insects will deposit eggs upon our plants
and transform the greenhouse into a caterpillar
farm.
But when we come to the next sub-division of
188 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
our book, the beetles, ah! that is a different propo-
sition because one may keep these alive for an in-
definite length of time in boxes and cages made
for them.
But before closing the chapter on butterflies,
let me tell of the butterfly, a storm-beaten indi-
vidual, I found hapless and helpless where the rain
had beaten it down by the roadside in Connecticut
last season. It could not fly because its wings were
uneven, I felt sorry for it in its pitiable condition
and I placed it upon the railing of a fence, and
taking a sharp blade of my pocket knife, trimmed
both wings off nicely and evenly, making them
each exactly the same size, although much smaller
than they were originally. Then I released the
butterfly and was pleased to see it fly away as
easily and apparently as care-free and happy as
if nothing had happened.
From a sentimental point of view this was a very
pretty incident, and the novel first-aid work ren-
dered to an injured butterfly will appeal to the sym-
pathies of all tender-hearted people. But the prac-
tical results of setting that butterfly free might be
the establishment of a colony of voracious caterpil-
lars. The experiment, however, was interesting,
Skippers 189
and I trust the results did no harm to the farmers.
I have kept grasshoppers, katydids and other
interesting specimens alive in the house until after
the winter holidays. The katydid was fed on
lettuce and was a most comical and amusing pet.
It met its death by creeping into the ashes of the
open fireplace and not getting out of the way when
the maid built the fire New Year's morning. That's
what Katy did !
CHAPTER TWELVE
COLEOPTERA. NAMES OF PARTS OF A BEETLE. GRUB-
WORMS AND WHERE AND HOW TO COLLECT BEETLES.
LIVING SUBMARINES AND HYDROPLANES. A DOODLE
TRAP. PET BEETLES. WHIRLIGIGS. LIONS AND TIGERS
OF THE PONDS. HOW DIVERS CARRY AIR UNDER WATER.
WE now come to that numerous tribe called the
" beetles." To the writer's mind they are more in-
teresting to the boys than any other race of in-
sects. They possess certain characteristics which
appeal to boys, by which I mean they have certain
things about them which make them good play-
mates for boys. In the first place, none of them
are poisonous ; in the next place, none of them will
hurt a boy who knows how to handle them, and in
the third place they are as a rule so stoutly built
and so thoroughly armored that, with ordinary
care in handling, there is little danger of injuring
the insect itself by playing with it. Added to this
they are often very comical.
Bugs are unpleasant to handle ; wasps, bees and
hornets are, to say the least, very inconvenient
things to handle. They are hot-tempered and have
a hot needle with which they puncture the skins of
190
COLE.OFTEJVV,
OLEOS, A SHEATH
PTCRON. AWING
Names of the parts of a beetle.
A, jaw bones, pinchers (mandibles); B, one of the small feelers (palpus); C, lip
(labrum); E, the big feelers (antennae); H, back of the head (pcicput); I, neck;
K, eye; L, chest (prothorax); M, wing cover (elytron); N, hind wings or back wings
(front wings are hardened into wing covers); O, shield (scuttellum); P, outside of the
back of the last part of the thorax, metathorax (metanotum) ; Q, the thigh or upper
part of the leg; R, R, R, rings of the belly or abdomen (tergites); T, shin-bone
(tibia); V, spurs; W, feet (tarsi); Y, hip-joint (trochanter) ; Z, hip bone (coxa).
NEW YORK
.ENOX Vi
Beetles 193
their captors. Butterflies and millers are far too
delicate to handle, but beetles, with the possible
exception of the carrion beetles and the soft-bodied
oil beetles, possess none of these disadvantages.
Beetles are six-legged insects, and, with few
exceptions, they have a pair of thick, horny front
wings w r hich are of no use while flying, but when at
rest act as covers for the hind-wings, fitting to-
gether like the shell of a turtle. Beetles also have
mouth parts for biting and chewing.
Beetles, like butterflies, start as a worm-like
creature, then go into the mummy state, from which
they emerge as beetles. Fig. 169 shows a beetle
as an insect with six legs; it also shows the wings
extended and the fore-wings, which form the
sheath and give the name to the family, are spread
apart. To the right or east of the beetle is a sketch
showing the under side of one from which the legs
have been removed. To the west or the left are
the legs, in the southwest corner of the drawing
are the mouth parts, in the southeast corner is a
sketch of my hunting knife in its sheath ; this is to
show what a sheath is. The knife I thrust in the
sheath from the top down, the beetle folds its wings
over its body then shuts its sheath down on them.
13
194 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
Both are sheaths inasmuch as they cover or pro-
tect either the knife-blade or the wings.
The name of the beetle family is Coleoptera,
which word is made up from koleos, a sheath, and
pteron, a wing. This combination was invented by
Mr. John Ray, an English naturalist, in 1705, and
it has stuck to the beetles ever since.
The larva? or baby beetles are not caterpillars,
but are generally known as grub-worms or meal-
worms or wire-worms because of their worm-like
appearance. Usually the larvse have six legs near
the front of the body, one pair of legs for each of
the first three divisions of the body, although the
grubs of some species are legless and some, one
might say, very nearly have legs on the tail end
of the body, and in many of the babies their walk-
ing, creeping or crawling is aided by warts on the
belly of the grub which serve as legs and feet.
The baby beetles, like their parents, have
mouth parts built for biting and most of these
babies are so timid and modest that they hide them-
selves away from sight in rotten stumps, in the
earth, under stones, inside of seeds, nuts and in
acorns, in furs, woolens and hair goods. Some
lead the lives of lions and tigers, catching and eat-
Beetles 195
ing other insects, some live on land and some in
the water and a few of them are degraded para-
sites that is, dead-beats, insects that live on other
insects, not by hunting and devouring them as do
tiger beetles, but living on the bodies of other in-
sects as do ticks, fleas, and lice upon the bodies of
mammals.
Those beetles the grubs of which live in rich
earth or rotten wood usually make themselves
cocoons by collecting the rubbish and bits of wood
around them to protect them while they lie in the
mummy or pupa state, and some of the larvae of the
beetles spin cocoons much the same as do the larvae
of the moths.
In killing the beetles for your cabinet collec-
tion, the cyanide bottle does the quickest work,
but it may spoil the color of the pretty red and
yellow beetles. Alcohol, however, will kill the
beetles and, if they are not kept in the alcohol
bottle too long, it will not cause the colors to
fade. Some people use a stout cloth insect net
and go on a blind hunt by sweeping the grass and
bushes with this net and then dumping the con-
tents, rubbish and all, into the poison bottle, which
196 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
kills the insects so that they may be removed at
leisure.
A great many beetles may be collected in the
springtime by scooping up the rubbish in the woods
and paths, putting it in a sieve and shaking the
latter over a piece of white paper.
Of course all the finer bits of rubbish will fall
on the paper, but with them will come a lot of sleepy
beetles which have been dozing away all winter
under the leaves.
The driftwood and rubbish left by the brooks,
streams and rivers on their shores may be examined
in the same way for specimens. Sometimes a drop
of ammonia water on a pile of rubbish, like the
poison gas used by the Germans, will force the
beetles to leave their hiding place and crawl on
the white paper spread there for that purpose.
Many insects, including some beetles, have a
habit, when frightened, of letting go all hold and
dropping to the ground and thus escaping cap-
ture ; but knowing this habit of theirs, the collector
will often invert an umbrella that is, put an um-
brella upside down under a bush and then strike |
the bush with his hand and thus frighten the beetles
Beetles
197
until the foolish things drop into the trap prepared
for them.
Some naturalists carry a bottle of alcohol with
a cork which has a hole in it, and in this hole a tin
funnel is thrust (Fig. 170). They use this novel
collecting bottle for those beetles which have the
&.
ANT-LION tit PIT-FALL
tumbling habit, especially those which infest mush-
rooms and toadstools. A likely mushroom or toad-
stool is carefully plucked, then carefully held over
the top of the funnel; when all is ready, the col-
lector fillips with his finger the toadstool, the jar
frightens the beetle and the hapless insect lets go
and drops, but instead of falling on the ground,
198 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
it hits the tin sides of the funnel and goes slipping
and sliding down into the trap through the nozzle
of the funnel into the bottle of alcohol where it
miserably perishes, as does an ant when it falls
into the hole of a Doodle-bug ( ant lion) (Fig. 171) .
Water, meat-eating beetles may be collected
by placing in the water a dead mole, mouse or
something of that kind, or they may be seined for
with pieces of wire netting as already described in
the forepart of this book, and they may often be
collected at night under the electric light. In fact,
some of them are so attracted by the electric light
that they have lately received the name of " electric-
light ' bugs.
But the handling of the dangerous poison
bottle and the pinning of the dead beetles is not as
interesting as the keeping and studying of the live
ones. There is nothing so interesting as life!
Nevertheless we need collections, in order to label
and name our specimens and learn their parts,
and thus fix them in our minds. In the front part
of this book under " Collecting " you are told how
to make a cyanide poison bottle, but I neglected to
caution the reader against making the layer over the
Beetles 199
poison so thick that the expansion and contraction
of the plaster of Paris may crack the bottle.
After the pieces of potassic cyanide are put in
the bottle by the druggist, on top of the cyanide
sprinkle the dry plaster of Paris ; level the plaster by
shaking it down a little, then take a common atom-
izer, fill it with water and spray the plaster with it.
When " fixed " the plaster will hold together in the
form of a shell over the poison and the shell can
be regulated and should not be thicker than the
glass of the bottle itself. Let the druggist do all
this for you because cyanide is a dangerous poison.
When you pin your dead beetles, thrust the
pin through the right elytron (Fig. 172) (wing
cover) about a third of the way down and, allowing
the point of the pin to come out on the right side
between the middle legs and the hind legs (Fig.
173) push the beetle up the pin, leaving only
enough of the latter protruding above its back to
give you a hold with your fingers when you put the
specimen in the cabinet or take it out.
Probably the most interesting pets in the way
of beetles are the ones you find in the water. They
are little trouble to feed and keep in confinement
because one can put them in an aquarium (Fig.
200
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
174) where they may be observed all the time. But
since the water beetles will come out at night to
fly around, the aquarium should be protected by a
wire netting. Some of the smaller water beetles
m
H
have an odd habit of swimming around and around
on the top of the water in the aquarium, all the time
emitting a whining, complaining noise. Others,
like the whirligig beetle (Fig. 175), for instance,
Beetles 201
strenuously object to being confined in the
aquarium, but will become accustomed to it in time,
and so tame that they may be fed from one's hands.
The whirligigs in parts of the Southwest are called
" apple bugs," not because they love apples, but
because when held in the closed hand for a while
they emit an odor like that of sweet apples; but
Packard says that when caught they give out a
disagreeable fluid; this may be true of Yankee
whirligigs but it is not true of the ones I caught
as a boy on Brookshaws Pond or the Licking River
in Kentucky.
The whirligig is an extremely shiny beetle of
oval form (Fig. 175) and bluish-black color that
you will find on the quiet eddies of the brooks, and
on the surface of the ponds, where they collect in
crowds composed of many individuals. If ap-
proached quietly and carefully, they will often be
seen resting perfectly still upon the surface of the
water, but the moment they are disturbed they
start rapidly circling around in and out among
themselves in a most bewildering manner.
The captives that I had in the aquarium, being
unable to circle around in the wide spirals to which
they were accustomed on the open water, would
202 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
dive down under the water when frightened, and,
clinging to a plant, remain there for some time.
But after a while they became accustomed to my
presence and when I caught a fly and held it for
them, they would take it from my fingers, and in
the winter time after the flies had disappeared they
would take little hits of fresh meat from my fingers.
But the eels that lived in the sand in the bottom
of the aquarium would smell the food and come
wiggling to the surface of the water in search of it.
The eels were extremely small, no larger than
small leeches, so when they seized the food which
the whirligig beetles held, it made an interesting
and even fight. The eels often won, however, by
twirling themselves around rapidly like a corkscrew
until they threw the whirligig in the air.
The female whirligig lays her cylinder-shaped
eggs on the leaves of water plants, placing them
end to end in parallel lines and in a little over a
week they hatch out creatures looking like thous-
and-legged worms (Fig. 176), each division of the
body having a thread-like breathing apparatus
very much like the Hellgramites, Dobsons, Clippers
or Bogarts. In August these queer things creep
out on the shore and spin cocoons in the retirement
Beetles
203
of which the pupa stays a month remodelling itself
into the form of a beetle.
These little incidents are what give interest,
they are the things that happen in life, and that is
the reason I tell you boys that live specimens are
much more interesting than dead ones. When I
was a small chap like you fellows I used to make
myself little cages for menageries of beetles, and
sometimes used two thin
disks of cork for the top
and bottom of the cage
and long bright pins for
bars (Fig. 177).
To-day, however, you
have the wire-screen net-
ting with which to make
cages of all kinds, whereas when we boys of yester-
day were building cages for wild beetles we had
only mosquito netting.
An ordinary square glass aquarium, the bottom
of which is covered with a layer of sand an inch
and one-half thick (Fig. 174) and one end of
which is banked up with sand and moss half way
up the side, may be made into a land-and-water
affair by putting in enough water to cover the
204 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
sand and allowing the moss to serve as the land. I
have such an aquarium in the window now and all
winter I kept water beetles and other interesting
aquatic insects with some water bugs in it.
It is my impression now that the water bugs
were the victors, for along towards spring I had
neglected my aquarium for some time and when I
looked in it for specimens from which to make
drawings for this book, the only two live creatures
left were two water bugs. I do not think the other
creatures died of starvation, but I strongly sus-
pect that the water bugs sucked the juice out of
them; even the caddice worms and snails were
sacrificed.
The animals which prey upon other animals,
as do the lions, tigers and wolves among mammals,
the hawks and eagles among birds, and various
beetles, bugs and spiders among the insects, are
called predaceous." Most of the predaceous in-
sects are useful to man because they help destroy
their insect relatives which live on the leaves of our
trees and garden truck.
THE DIVING BEETLES
The Diving beetles (Figs. 178 and 179), the
larvae of which are called Water Tigers (Fig. 180) ,
The Water Tiger
205
178
differ from the ground beetles in the form of the
hinder sockets and shields which join the legs to
the body. These are very large, touching each
other on the inner edge and reaching the side of
the body, entirely cutting off the belly divisions
from that part called the Metathorax.*
They have oar-like swim-
ming legs decorated with long
hairs. The hind pair are flat-
tened like a paddle or oar blade.
The young are hose-shaped with
big flat heads armed with prun-
ing-knife-like jaws with which
they grab their prey or even
cut off the pollywogs' tails.
Sometimes they catch small
minnows and suck their blood.
179
THE WATER TIGER
The body of the Water Tiger ends in a pair of
long breathing tubes (Fig. 180) which it pushes
up into the air. When ready for change, the larva
creeps on to land, builds itself a round prison, and
two or three weeks later the beetle conies out,
* That part of the chest or thorax between the upper thorax or
chest and the belly or abdomen.
206
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
unless the cocoon is made in the fall, in which case
they sleep all winter in it and come out as beetles in
the spring.
The Water Tiger has none of the appearance
of the beast from which it takes its name, but it is
just as blood-thirsty. Put some in your aquariums
and watch them as they go about seeking their
prey and gathering air to breathe.
One of the most interesting facts about aquatic
insects- -that is, insects which live in the water is
their various ways of supplying themselves with
air. Take, for instance, the tribe known as the
Scavenger beetles. These beetles, when quiet at
the top of the water, keep their head uppermost,
as does a man. Some beetles reverse this position.
The predaceous diving beetles, those whose horny
J8G SMOOTH -BEETLE
Q{/33 TJOtf -BEETLE
3RARY
ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. \
C L.
Hydrophilidse 209
wing covers make a straight line where they join
on the back, rest in the water head downward, with
the tip of the tail at the surface. Many of the
insects carry the air down with them, covering the
whole under side of their bellies with minute
bubbles, which gives them the appearance of being
coated with quicksilver. When frightened, the
whirligigs hitch a bubble of air to the hind tip of
their body, and dive below with this supply of
breathing material. They remain under the water
clinging to a stone, stick or plant until more air is
needed, then come to the surface and renew the
supply.
Some water beetles deposit their eggs upon the
under side of a leaf (Fig. 181) or floating stick and
supply the eggs (and the young when hatched)
with air by enclosing the eggs in a waterproof sack
or bag in one end of which they attach a horny
pipe or tube extending up to the air.
HYDROPHILID^E
You can remember that name by thinking of
hydrophobia, hydroplanes and hydrants. The
Triangular (Fig. 182) is one and five-tenths inches
long and shiny black. Most of the water beetles'
14
210 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
larvse are said to be meat eaters, but some of them,
when they grow to be beetles, repent and become
vegetarians. One kind is known as the Scavenger
beetle (Fig. 183) because it has a very useful way
of eating all the decayed matter and thus cleaning
out one's aquarium. But we cannot give more
space to these live submarines (yes, not only are
they submarines, but also hydroplanes and aero-
planes and surface swimmers combined Figs.
184-188), our object being only to start the reader
on the road to hunting, capturing and keeping some
of them alive, for besides being instructive, they
are a source of endless amusement, not only to the
boys who collect them but also to the parents of
the boys and their guests.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
TIGER BEETLES. HOBGOBLINS' DENS AND A REAL MAGIC
TRICK. CATERPILLAR HUNTERS. BLIND HARPALUS
BEETLES AND OTHER BLIND INSECTS IN MOTHER NA-
TURE'S CAVE FOR THE BLIND. CARRION BEETLES.
UNDERTAKER AND GRAVE-DIGGER BEETLES. AMUSING
FACTS ABOUT CARRION BEETLES, FLIES AND ROVE
BEETLES.
TIGER BEETLES
BEETLE, in old English, means a biter, and you
will notice that most of the beetles can bite your
finger severely enough to make you wish you had
not put it against their biting apparatus. But you
need not experiment with your fingers on their
jaws; try beetles' "teeth" with the end of a match
or broomstraw.
Among the best biters are Tiger beetles (Figs.
189-192). Every boy knows the Tiger beetle
by sight, if he does not by name. Everyone has
seen the lively insects running along in front of
them on the sandy shore of the lake or ocean or
on the dusty country road. They only run a short
distance, however, then take to their wings and
fly, but even then they do not go far before they
alight in the road or on the beach, always facing
211
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
the approaching pedestrian, and wait for him to
overtake them, when they scuttle along and again
take to their wings.
These beetles always attract attention because
they are beautifully and strikingly decorated with
metallic colors. They have large heads and large
eyes and toothed jaws and they seize and feast
upon the unfortunate insects which cross their path.
Even the baby Tiger beetles (Fig. 193) are
meat eaters and furnished with strong jaws like
their mothers and fathers. But the babies are
trappers, not hunters; they lay in " watchful wait-
ing ' for their prey, dig holes in the ground ( Fig.
194) creep into them and use their head for a trap-
door (Fig. 195) to cover the hole; the head being
the color of the ground, it is not noticed by the
LIBRAF
ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.
: d
Tiger Beetles 215
careless insect that thoughtlessly crosses the fatal
ring.
I said " crosses," but it seldom gets across, it
usually stops right there! (Fig. 196.) The jaws
of the baby Tiger beetle which, like a spring trap
(Fig. 197), have been held open, come together
like a vise on the unfortunate victim's body (Fig.
196), the prisoner is then drawn into the hole and
devoured at leisure.
On the fifth ring of its body, counting from the
tail, the grub or baby Tiger beetle has a hump with
two hooks (Fig. 193) by which the thing anchors
itself in its hole when its jaws are fastened on a prey
too big and strong for it to manage without an
anchor, or it uses the hump to aid it in climbing
to the top of its well.
If the reader will look in the paths where the
ground is hard and smooth, he may find a number
of small holes which have the appearance of old
ant holes, but which are really holes occupied by
the hobgoblin larvae of the Tiger beetles.
My dear friend, the late W. Hamilton Gibson,
once said that he counted seven small holes within
sight as he sat upon the steps of his house. The
216 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
reason he could count the holes was because he
had frightened the hobgoblins and they had re-
treated to the bottom of their wells leaving the
black holes in sight.
After sitting for a while on the steps, all the
holes vanished, Mr. Gibson could not see one of
them. The reason for this was that the hobgoblins
had come to the surface and stopped up the holes
with their flat dirt-colored heads, thus hiding the
openings. Figs. 195 and 197 show drawings of the
top of the hobgoblin's head. This head is set on
the body almost at right angles, that is, with its
chin down so that the head can fit like the cover to
a stewpan over the opening in the ground.
You can distinguish these holes from the ordi-
nary ant holes because each of them has a round
hollow surrounding the hole, a circular trench with
a central well for a retreat, in place of a hole in
the ground surrounded by a hill of pellets, as have
the ants. If you find some of these hobgoblins'
dens you can have a lot of fun with people who
know nothing about them. Point out the holes to
your friends, let them count them, then make your
companion sit perfectly still for five minutes or
Tiger Beetles 217
more without moving while you mutter some magic
words.
Of course any words will do, but just for the
sake of being accurate, you can say: "I conjure you
to disappear, ye holes of the hobgoblins 1 Ya, Ya,
Ya; He, He, He; Va, Hy, Hy; Ha, Ha, Ha;
Va, Va, Va; An, An, An; Aia, Aia, Aia; El, Ay,
Elebra, Elechim! ' which I take from an old book
of magic, so it must be right. If you do not move
and keep quiet long enough the hobgoblins will
come up and stop the holes with their heads, and
your astonished friend will apparently see the holes
disappear right before his eyes. When there are no
more holes in sight, cry aloud, ' I conjure the holes
to reappear ! ' Clap your hands and stamp your
foot and all the hobgoblins will disappear and leave
all the holes in plain sight! This is real magic. It
is the magic of knowing more than the other fellow.
You may fish for these hobgoblins, and when
you become skilful, you can catch them by insert-
ing a straw of grass down the hole (Fig. 194) and
when the hobgoblin nips it on the end, withdraw
the grass with the hobgoblin attached. In fact you
can have real fun with these queer things and in
doing so learn a lot about Tiger beetles.
218
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
CATERPILLAR HUNTERS
The caterpillar hunter (Fig. 198) is a long-
legged beetle with powerful long hooked jaws.
The caterpillar hunter is fond of canker-worms
and if we had enough caterpillar hunters to eat up
the canker-worms, we could save many of our fruit
/
trees from destruction, and, if all you boys learned
to know these useful beetles, you could do much
GROUND $/
BLLl LLS
to prevent thoughtless people from thinking them
to be harmful and killing them as bugs.
There is little danger of people killing many,
if any, of the bright-colored Tiger beetles which
run ahead of you on the dusty or sandy shore, be-
cause these gaudy meat-eaters are very difficult to
capture even with a net, but some of the ground
The Harpalus Beetle 219
beetles do not fly and some of them have no wings,
and they can be trampled to death as they are
running along the grass in search of canker worms.
These beetles are of a dull metallic color and
have a habit of prowling through the grass or hiding
under sticks and stones. After dark they go hunt-
ing game. The fierce Calisoma (Fig. 199) will
even attack the big June bug and rip open its sides.
The June bug is a helpless brown beetle, but so
big that one would not expect the other beetle to
attack it.
THE HARPALUS BEETLE
There is an interesting little Harpalus beetle
with a small head, a heart-shaped waist with a
wide hoop-skirt effect (Fig. 200). Of course, the
heart-shaped part is not the body, it is what is
called the pro-thorax, but nevertheless it
looks as if it might correspond with the bust
and waist of a woman and the lower part
represents her skirts. The little beetles are
dressed in yellowish-red waists and blue or green
tinged skirts in other words, wing covers. These
funny little beetles are known as Bombardiers, from
the habit they have of discharging a pungent fluid
with a report like a teeny, weeny gun. The shoot-
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
ing is probably done as a means of defense against
just such enemies as the fierce Calisoma beetle
might be.
Some of the Harpalus beetles do not look at
all like the Bombardiers, for they are large, heavy-
set individuals with an almost square pro-thorax.
Every time you meet one, smooth him on the back
and tell him what a fine fellow he is, because these
beetles feed on cut-worms, which any man who has
run a garden knows are the sort of garden sub-
marines which loaf around under ground ready to
attack a neutral, and the meanest and most annoy-
ing insects on a farm.
There is a funny Harpalus beetle without eyes
which inhabits the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky.
There are no gardens, no beds of radishes or lettuce
in the cave, but for aught we know there may be
blind cut-worms there for the blind Harpalus to
feed upon. There are blind fish and blind craw-
fish, and in some Kentucky caves I have visited I
have seen thousands of blind katydids, so there is
no reason why there should not be blind cut-worms
and it is a pity that all of them are not deaf, dumb,
blind and paralyzed.
Carrion Beetles 221
CARRION BEETLES
Among the insects we have various trades and
professions, including divers, swimmers, mud-
daubers, paper-makers, net makers, scavengers, and
now we come to sextons, undertakers and grave-
diggers, a useful but unpleasant lot of little people.
Useful because they will quickly bury a dead shrew,
mouse, frog, mole, or a dead bird, and they will
also do their best to bury much larger creatures
which may be found dead in the field or forest and
thus prevent the carrion from poisoning the air.
The female carrion beetles lay their eggs upon
the dead creatures which they bury and the young
beetles hatch out on the dead bodies and imme-
diately begin to devour the carrion. The carrion
beetles may be known by their very decidedly
/ %J v *''
clubbed antennae, their flattened bodies and their
disagreeable odor, not to speak of their turkey-
buzzard habits. The larvae or young (Fig. 201)
are long- jointed creatures reminding one very
forcibly of some sort of crustacean (a family to
which lobsters, crawfish and shrimp belong). The
larva makes itself an oval cocoon, into which it
retires while it is undergoing the change which
makes it into a beetle (Fig. 202) . In that asylum
222
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
Mother Nature has made for her blind creatures,
known to us as the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky,
the carrion beetles have sent one of their blind
relatives.
The carrion beetles have a black, nasty fluid
with which they are only too generous and it makes
them disagreeable to
handle, which is prob-
ably its purpose. Need-
less to say that it does
not add to their attrac-
tiveness, neither does
the fetid odor which
emanates from their
flat bodies and from
their larvae recommend
them to us as pets;
but in spite of their
ghoulish tendencies and
offensive odor, which they retain even when dried
and pinned, many of them are marked with brilliant
colors, like the red-spotted Great Sexton (Fig.
204) and it is quite interesting to watch them at
their work burying some small dead creature. Al-
though I cannot recommend them as pets, never-
Carrion Beetles 22: '5
theless if you are making a collection of beetles
it will not do to be too squeamish, besides which the
carrion beetles look quite attractive in a cabinet.
We do not know positively how the carrion
beetles find the dead animals, but it is supposed to
be by the sense of smell. If this is true, they are
much more expert than the carrion flies. If the
cook is boiling cabbage, the blue-bottle flies will
mistake the odor of the succulent vegetable for
something much more disagreeable and offensive,
and the flies will fill the kitchen with their buzzing
bodies unless the screens are kept down.
Of course I do not mean literally fill the
kitchen; to be more guarded in my statement it
may be well to say that a great many will find their
way into the kitchen to the annoyance of the house-
keeper.
Out in the woods of Pike County, Pennsyl-
vania, high in that mountainous country, I have a
log house; log houses have many cracks and crev-
ices through which small creatures may creep;
when we cook cabbage in the log house, no sooner
does it begin to boil and the perfume pervade the
air, than the blue-bottle flies begin to appear.
Although there are no flies anywhere in sight when
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
the cabbage is put on the stove and all the windows
and doors are carefully closed, they creep under
the door and over the sill, they work themselves in
sideways through a crack below the window sill
and soon you hear them buzzing in every corner
of the room. But never, on any occasion, has the
scent of cabbage attracted the carrion beetles.
From these amusing facts it seems that either
the carrion beetles find their food by some other
means than following their noses or that they have
a finer sense of smell than has the blue-bottle fly.
Whatever the reason is, if I find a dead frog or
mouse near my log house and with a stick push the
body to one side, it will never fail to reveal several
varieties of carrion beetles scurrying around where
the dead body lay.
ROVE BEETLES
You may recognize the Rove beetle by the fact
that it has outgrown its clothes. Its skirts are too
short, they are so short that in place of skirts they
might well be called kilts, in other words the
elytra or wing covers are very short, leaving the
naked body, belly or abdomen of the insect more
than half exposed (Fig. 205). The beetle seems
conscious of its nakedness and when it runs it raises
Rove Beetles 225
the end of its body and moves it as if embarrassed.
The action of the beetle in elevating its tail
causes the children to fear it. The Rove beetle
has stout jaws, but that is not what the children
fear; they are afraid that there may be a poison
sting concealed in the threatening upheld tail.
Rove beetles are found about
decaying substances and their
babies or the larvae look very much
like their parents (Fig. 206), that
is, they are nearly as well de-
veloped, or we may put it another
way: the parents are almost as undeveloped as the
children. When the larva changes to a beetle it
makes no such great change as does the whirligig
beetle's larva when it changes from an aquatic
worm-like creature to a round-bodied, hard-shelled,
shiny beetle.
Some of the Rove beetles are as much as an
inch in length, but most of them are very small.
They are fond of damp places, hiding under stones,
in manure heaps, among mushrooms, toadstools
and moss, or under the bark and leaves of trees.
Numerous species of Rove beetles dwell in ant-hills
and it is possible that you may find some in the
bumble bees' nest.
15
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE DESTRUCTIVE SKIN-EATERS (DERMESTES), FOND OF
ONE'S SPECIMENS, CARPETS AND FURNITURE. STAG
BEETLES OR PINCH-BUGS. THE GOLDSMITH BEETLE.
JUNE BUGS. THE SPOTTED PELIDNOTA OR GRAPE VINE
BEETLE.
BUFFALO BEETLES ( DERMESTES )
THE buffalo beetles will give the collector a
lot of trouble. He will have no trouble collecting
them, for they collect themselves and will be found
to be passionately fond of a collection of other
beetles or butterflies and moths. They are oblong
and oval, with short legs, colored with white and
brick-red and black, the bottom of the elytra
(wing-covers) grayish, decorated with two broad
lines (Fig. 207).
The beetle is slow in movement, and when fright-
ened it plays possum, that is, pretends to be dead.
It is the larvae or grubs of this tribe which de-
vour dried meat, skins, leather, tortoise shell and
almost any animal substance, and are exceedingly
destructive to books and furniture. Although ob-
noxious in these respects, the insects of this family
are of great service in the economy of nature, by
helping to destroy animal matter and work it into a
226
Buffalo Beetles
227
substance .to enrich the soil and by their labors,
united with those of the carrion beetles, etc., destroy-
ing such portions of these remains as are left un-
touched by the flesh
flies that only con-
sume the soft por-
tions of carcasses.
Like the perfect in-
sects, their larvae are
seldom observed
upon the surface of
matters which they
attack.
The female lavs
V
its eggs on the speci-
mens in one's cabinet
and the mean, bristly
little larva eats its
way into one's choicest objects, hides inside of
them and eats out all the inside parts, leaving only
a thin shell which falls apart with the slightest
jolt. When you examine your cabinet of speci-
mens and notice fine dust under some of them
you can be sure that the baby skin-eater or der-
mestes is at work destroying your specimens.
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
Specimens which have been thoroughly touched
up with poison will not be eaten by the dermestes.
Inside of some Egyptian mummies opened in
1849 were found a great number of mummy
dermestes and mummy larva?, which must have
found their way there before the human mummies
were prepared with preservatives.
But it isn't safe to poison your carpets on your
floor and these pests will eat holes in your carpets.
A mischievous dermestes has been introduced into
America from Europe and we know it here as the
buffalo beetle. The beetle is about three-sixteenths
of an inch in length and is black, brick-red and
white in color, as you will readily see if you hold a
magnifying glass over one of them.
I have one of the larva? before me as I write.
It measures three-sixteenths of an inch in length.
It does not seem to make much difference to the
larva which way it travels. My little boy was very
much amused with it, claiming that it had a head
at both ends. It was caught this morning on the
parlor rug, but it must have found its way there
from a more secure pasture, because the parlor
rug was on the clothesline being hammered by a
lusty colored man only a few days ago. The pres-
ence of this little rascal, however, shows how neces-
The Black Carpet Beetle
sary it is to keep constant watch in the sumn in-
time on all household articles made of wool.
Mr. Leland O. Howard says that the larvae of
these domestic pests are useful in destroying the
eggs of the Tussock moths, also that a certain wee
wasp is useful in destroying the young dermestes.
When this dermestes is outdoors it dines upon
the pollen of the flowers. It is very fond of the
blossoms of the shad hush. Indoors it will destroy
the specimens of your cabinet and eat holes in
your carpet or your clothes. It probably had more
to do with introducing hard-wood floors into our
buildings and doing away with carpets for our
floors than any other cause. While it was plentiful
fifteen years ago, it does not seem to be doing much
damage at present writing. It is not fond of waxed
hard-wood floors and as for rugs that people take
up and shake every day, it takes no stock in them.
Maybe for that reason it has again turned its
attention to the outdoor world. It also has an
ugly bristly larva.
BLACK CARPET BEETLE AND ITS RELATIVES
Fig. 208 shows a pest in museums, that de-
stroys valuable specimens. Fig. 209 is the black
carpet beetle, fond of feather pillows and feather
230 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
beds. It is the larva that does the mischief. Fig.
210 illustrates the larder beetle, which is very fond
of bacon and ham, and also likes dried beef. Watch
for it in May.
There is another beetle which fits in about here,
which is of an adventurous spirit. The beetle is
shaped about the same as the carpet beetle (Figs.
211, larva and beetle) and lives in the Eastern
States ; the males and old-maid females are exceed-
ingly active and when the day is hot they collect
upon the stones in mid-stream, selecting stones
that just peep out above the surface of the rush-
ing water. Here they play tag in a most lively
fashion, occasionally flying a short distance over
the water, but they do not dive beneath it. While
they frequent almost submerged objects in the
rapid water, they never allow the water to cover
them, dodging each wavelet that washes over their
particular playground. The favorite location for
them is in the dangerous waters j ust above Niagara
Falls. The larva? or babies of this beetle wear a
coat of fine hair or down, which holds the air that
the babies breathe when they go below water. The
larva is shaped like a basin or shallow bowl with
an elliptical outline, that means an edge the shape
Stag Beetles or Pinch-Bugs 231
of a circle, which has been pulled out at the two
ends and made longer than a true circle or ring.
The edges of the back of this queer baby extend
far beyond the real body of the creature so as to
cover it up like a bowl. Another odd thing about
it is that it can stick its head out or draw it back at
pleasure. Yes, boys, there are a lot of funny things
in this world and this beetle is one of them.
STAG BEETLES OR PINCH-BUGS
Fig. 169 is the pinch-bug, but it is not our
native American one. Tom Sawyer never saw a
pinch-bug like that represented in 169 and we only
use it because it makes a good diagram to show the
different parts of a beetle. The male pinch-bug
has larger pinchers than the female and is a rich
mahogany color and of a truculent temper. The
fact is that this beetle knows he has a means of
defending himself; he is always armed and hence
always ready for fight. When he comes blunder-
ing into the house through an open door or a raised
screen, bangs himself against the wall and falls
on the floor, he seems to think that the wall wanted
to put up a fight of some kind, so if he is fortu-
nate enough to fall on his feet instead of on his
232
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
back, he rears up the front end of his body, opens
wide his pincers and dares everything in sight to
attack him. Naturalists call him the Stag-horn
beetle, but among the bovs he will always remain
O / v
a pinch-bug (Fig. 212). The larva? are grub
worms (Fig. 213), typical fat-tailed grub-worms
with white, wrinkled, greasy-looking bodies- -they
Friend of Our Youth.
look as if they would fry like salt pork. One may
find them in rotten wood. When this thick white
grub feels the inward call for something greater,
it makes itself a cocoon of the fragments of rotten
wood and retires until it comes out a real six-legged
fighting stag-horned beetle, a soldier of fortune.
Speaking of soldiers reminds me of a stag-horn
Stag Beetles or Pinch-Bugs 233
of the allies of which we read in an old magazine of
1900:
"As you walk by the hedgeside a strange noise
suddenly attracts your attention; it is the buzz of
an insect, but loud enough to startle you; it might
be mistaken for the reeling of a nightjar, but it is
perhaps more like the jarring hum of a fastly-
driven motor car. The reason of the noise is that
the beetle has with great pains climbed up a certain
height from the ground and in order to ascertain
whether he has got far enough, he erects himself
on his stand, lifts his wing cases, shakes out his
wings, and begins to agitate them violently, turn-
ing this way and that to make sure that he has a
clear space. If he then attempts to fly- -it is one
of his common blunders- -he instantly strikes
against some branch or cluster of leaves and is
thrown down. The tumble does not hurt him in
the least, but so greatly astonishes him that he
remains motionless a good while, then recovering
his senses, he begins to ascend again. At length,
after a good many accidents and adventures by
the way, he gets on to the topmost twig, and after
some buzzing to get up steam, launches himself
heavily on the air and goes away in grand style."
This proves him to be a real cousin to our pinch-bug.
234
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
THE GOLDSMITH BEETLE
In the swinging drawer of my easel, amid paint
brushes and crow-quill pens, lead pencils, crayons,
scales, dividers and whetstones, there lies a poor
crippled beetle. It is seven-eighths of an inch
in length with wing covers of a light lemon yellow
color and a chest of red gold with a glittering sheen,
while underneath it is a metallic-green color coated
with white wool. Alas! it has no legs! Something
happened to it before it was picked
up in the front yard and brought into
the studio. It evidently had been
out all night and met with trouble.
Nothing but the sockets mark the
places where legs once grew ; one side
of its face is damaged and yet this
poor cripple, armless and legless, manages to creep
slowly over a piece of rough paper, or in the bot-
tom of the drawer. Just how it moves its body I
am unable to state.
The goldsmith beetle (Fig. 214) is a very pretty
insect. In its baby state it is accused of injuring
the roots of the strawberry vine ; they also say that
it injures shade trees and orchards, but personally I
The June-Bug or May-Beetle
have never seen them plentiful enough to do any
great amount of damage.
Some time in June the female deposits her eggs
under the ground, laying them singly, apparently
as she digs her way down. She deposits something
over a dozen rather long white eggs. The young
grubs come out near the middle of July.
THE JUNE-BUG OR THE MAY-BEETLE
The June-bug as the boys call it (Fig. 215),
usually comes a little before June and is known
among the older people as the May-beetle. The
young people count it as the biggest fool in the
beetle tribe, as it is always bumping and buzzing
around and getting itself in trouble,
banging its head against the ceiling,
singeing its wings and legs over the
chimney of the kerosene lamp, and ap-
parently never doing anything with any
purpose or thought.
These blundering beetles are of a chestnut-
brown color and although the shell feels smooth to
the touch, if carefully examined it will be found
V
to be covered with little hollows, dents or dimples
about the size of a needle-point. Each of the win
<r
5
236 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
covers has two or more fine ridges or lines running
up and down. The June-bug's breast is covered
with fine long hair and the shell of the beetle seems
to be thinner than that of others of its tribe.
The baby June-bug can play havoc with the
clover, the hay and the lawn grass. Last season
at Redding, Connecticut, they seriously injured
even the pasture lands, leaving big brown patches
of dead grass. Underneath the sod on the lawn
one could pick up a handful of fat, white, greasy
grubs in a square foot of ground. . The chickens
and birds grew fat, but the farmers grew lean.
The crows ate great numbers of the beetles and
the skunks were not slow in hunting them. Some-
times the June-bugs injure the trees, but they are
such fools, such stupid things, that if one spreads
sheets under the trees in the morning, then shakes
the branches, they will all fall down in a heap and
may be gathered up like apples, crushed and fed
to the chickens.
SPOTTED PELIDNOTA OR GRAPE-VINE BEETLE
Harris says that the grape-vine beetle (Fig.
216) sometimes proves very injurious to the vine,
but the writer has never seen them in numbers suffi-
The Grape-vine Beetle 237
cient to do any material damage. The grape-vine
beetle has always been the plaything or playmate
of the idle schoolboy. As this beetle flies in the
daytime and is not stupid like the June-bug, it
affords more amusement. The lads tie a thread
around the body of the beetle between its arms and
its first pair of legs along the line separating the
thorax from the wing covers. If the knot is drawn
too tight it will cut the beetle into two pieces, but
if it is drawn just tight enough to keep
it from slipping off and the knot
brought round to the middle of the
back as shown on page 10, it will not
interfere with the beetle's movements
at all. And so the idle boys in Ohio
and Kentucky fasten a thread to the insect about
four feet long and the other end of the thread to a
switch or wand which they carry in their hand while
ml /
the beetle flies around overhead, to the boys' great
delight. The grape-vine beetle is a yellowish-brown
color with three dots on each wing cover and two
dots on its thorax. Underneath, the body is a
metallic or bronze green. The male is smaller than
the female and more inclined to be red, while the
female is larger than the male and more inclined to
238 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
yellow in color, The baby grape-vine beetles are
grub-worms which live in the rotten roots of trees.
You can find the beetles by looking on the under
side of the grape-vine leaves along in midsummer
and you can keep the beetles alive for an indefinite
time if you feed them with fresh grape-vine leaves.
Separated from the last-named beetle by the
fact that it has nine joints in its antenna, smeller
or feeler, and wing covers with a skinny margin or
edges, is another beetle known as
ANOMALA
This one is said to be a serious foe to the grape-
vines in some parts of our country. The larvae eat
away the flowers, buds and blossoms of the grape-
vine. You may find them also in the sumac
blossoms.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TUMBLE-BUGS USEFUL AS SCAVENGERS. A NOVEL METHOD
OF MAKING MODERN ANTIQUE SCARABS. SAWHORN
BEETLES, SNAP-BUGS OR SPRING BEETLES. A SNAP-BUG
SPIRIT SEANCE. FIRE-FLIES OR LIGHTNING BUGS.
TUMBLE-BUGS
THESE are industrious, intelligent, comical fel-
lows and the tumble-bugs in the Ohio lliver Valley
are a constant source of entertainment and amuse-
ment to the young people. On the steep bank of
the Licking River the boys would often force the
industrious beetles to roll their precious ball con-
taining the egg (Fig. 217) which was to hatch out
a baby tumble-bug (Fig. 218) over the edge of
the bank and then watch the worried parent beetles
hunt for the ball. If the latter did not roll too far
they would find it without assistance and use every
endeavor to boost it up again on the top of the
bank. Sometimes they were successful, sometimes
the boys had to help them.
Tumble-bugs are useful scavengers; they clean
up and bury the refuse, and make their balls of
cow manure, that is, the tumble-bugs of the Ohio
Valley do so. One bug stands on its hands and
239
240 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
pushes the ball with its hind legs, on the other
side of the ball the other bug stands on its hind
legs and pulls the ball with its hands. The ball is
covered with earth, dust or sand so that there is
nothing disagreeable about it any more than if it
were a clay ball. The balls are buried by the
beetles, sometimes many inches below the surface
of the ground. The eggs hatch out inside the ball
and the grub eats the material of which the ball
is made (Fig. 218, larva full-grown, ready for a
change). I believe there is but one egg in each
ball and the grub stays in its case until it changes
into a tumble-bug.
There are a number of different beetles which
we might call manure beetles in the United States,
some that I have seen in Alabama and Mississippi
are very brilliantly colored, some have a horn like
a rhinoceros. They all belong to the same family
with the sacred scarabasus of Egypt, the sacred
tumble-bug which is engraved on gems, sculptured
in the stones and was made into necklaces and all
sorts of ornaments by the ancient Egyptians. The
old pottery, stone or precious-stone scarabs are
considered very valuable relics and bring big prices,
but it is rumored that some Yankee in Egypt is
TUMBLE-" BUGS " AND YOUNG WOOD-BORER IN PINE STICK.
DICKY-BEETLE.
SNAP-BEETLES AND YOUNG.
16
RY
c
Sawhorn Beetles 43
manufacturing modern antique scarabs. It is said
he has a novel method of making them look old by
feeding them to turkeys, after which he sells them
to the Arabs, who in turn peddle them to tourists.
SAWHORN BEETLES
These beetles form a great tribe sometimes
called Serricorn beetles, but sawhorn is easier to
remember. They are so called because the tips
of the joints of their antennas are thought to look
like the teeth of a saw. Among the sawhorn
beetles are the Dicky-bugs (Fig. 220) which the
French call the Richards and some English call
burn-cows and others call Bubrestians, but the
Dicky-bug is the name by which the boys used to
call them and it is a name one can remember, be-
sides which Dick is short for the Richard of the
French.
You will note in Fig. 169 that there is a little
piece of shell shaped like a triangle up near the
waist of the beetle where the wing-covers join. It
is quite distinct in Fig. 169 and in most of the
beetles already described, but when you come to
Dicky-bugs, it is very small. The Dicky-bugs
are often very prettily colored and you can find
244 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
them on the branches of the trees, where they move
very slowly, and if you frighten them they play
possum, folding up their legs, letting go all hold
and falling to the ground. But when they want to
fly, they are experts at it. The young of the
Dickies are sawdust eaters; they bore into the log
or tree trunk, chew up the wood and swallow the
sawdust. Fig. 221 shows the larvae of some wood-
boring beetles that I found eating a dry pine stick
which I was whittling. Very dry food, one would
think, but the little grub seemed to grow fat on it.
The hickory borer is of a dull brassy color, but
a bright copper underneath and it is thickly en-
graved with numerous lines, besides which it has
some black spots which stick up on its wing covers
and the ends of the wings separate into two points.
The Dicky-bugs or beetles, as they would be prop-
erly called, damage wood of different trees. One
is the Hickory Dick and then there is the Big
Pine Dick; all of the tribes are injurious and do
a lot of damage. They bore into the pine logs of
which my log house is built. Then comes the
Ichneumon fly, with a very long ovapositor (egg
putter) which she pokes down into the worm hole
in the log and shoots her eggs into the body of the
Snap-Bugs
soft grub; the little Ichneumon babies, when they
hatch, eat the grub up.
I once saw an Ichneumon work over half an hour
trying to put its ovapositor through the head of a
nail; evidently the black spot made by the head of
the nail was mistaken for a worm hole by the
Ichneumon.
SNAP-BUGS (SPRING BEETLES)
It is too bad that the name " bug ' should be
attached to all these beetles ; we know they are not
bugs and snap-beetle would sound just as well as
snap-bug. But bugs is what they are called, and
we must follow suit even if we know better. The
finest of all snap-bugs is the big gray one with the
eye-spots on his shoulder blades (Fig. 222 larva,
Fig. 223 beetle).
Sometimes the snap-beetle is called the Death
Watch (Fig. 224) and when superstitious and
ignorant people hear the snapping on the walls
of an old house, they are sure that means someone
is going to die soon, someone who is living in that
house is going to die! If you told one of these
people that it was only a snap-bug calling its mate
it would do no good; they have been taught that
246 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
it is the Death Watch and they will believe it is the
Death Watch as long as they live.
If this foolish belief would end there, we would
not care, but these people will try to teach you boys
that the noise of the snap-beetle is the Death
Watch and it is one of the purposes of this book
to set you right on this question and many others
like it.
When the old red-headed woodpecker hammers
on its drum, the hollow tree, or the yellow hammer,
highholder or flicker does the same, it is calling its
mate. The rat-tat-tat has the same meaning to the
woodpecker or yellow hammer as did the plinkty-
plunk of the troubadour's lute to his fair lady.
And that is all the meaning that there is in the
snapping of the beetle.
But if you want to have some fun with a snap-
ping beetle, get one of the smaller kind, one of
those little brown fellows or the ash-colored snap-
bug (ash-colored Elater).. Keep him in a little
pill box or some convenient place until evening,
then when the family is looking for amusement,
tell them all that you are a medium and the spirits
will rap for you on the table. Have the company sit
around the table and only rest the tips of their
Fire-flies 247
fingers upon it so that there will be no cheating ( ? ) .
Under your finger you have Mr. Snap-bug (Fig.
224), back down; a slight pressure will cause him
to make a decided rapping noise. In all well-regu-
lated spiritual seances they began by saying : I f
there are any spirits present they will please mani-
fest themselves by rapping." This is the time for
your snap-bug to answer. Then you ask the spirit
to rap once for Yes and twice for No, after which
you can ask any question you choose and get just
the answer you want, at the same time greatly
astonishing and mystifying the rest of the circle.
I am telling you this to show you that even a lowly
snap-bug, a wood borer, an outlaw, is of some use
in the world, for anything which can serve the
purpose of harmless amusement is doing the world
a great service. After the snap-beetles come the
fire-flies and these fire-flies are no more flies than
are the snap-bugs bugs ; they are all of them beetles.
FIRE-FLIES
Of course the fire-flies, like all other creatures,
have a lot of relatives; they really are, I believe,
only a sub-family, but the lamps they carry give
them a distinction which their relatives cannot
248
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
claim. The light-giving organs are not always in
the same place on different kinds of fire-flies, or as
we always knew them in the middle West, light-
ning bugs. The babies or larvae as well as the
beetles are luminous and some people say that the
eggs give light, but this doubtful. If you mash a
lightning bug the light is brighter than before you
stepped on it. The Pennsylvania lightning bug is
about five-tenths of an inch long, and of a sort of
yellowish color with
dark colored stripes.
It is the light-
ning bugs (Fig.
2241/2) which lend
such charm and en-
chantment to the field
and roadsides on summer nights. The little fire-
works people are soft-winged beetles of the family
Lampyridse, which have the property, the gift, or
the power of sending out from their bodies flashes of
soft light. There are several distinct species of
so-called fire-flies native to North America, accord-
ing to the eminent naturalist, Professor Riley, the
most common and widely distributed of which is
Photinus pyralis (Linn.). This insect is most
Fire-flies 24!)
abundant in the Southwest, where, during sum-
mer evenings its constant flashes of light give the
air the appearance of being filled with moving
sparks of fire. The beetle is of oblong form, some-
what flattened and varies from one-half to five-
eighths of an inch in length. It has a dull black
wing covered with pale yellow edges, a yellow
chest with a central black spot set in patches of
rose color. The under side of the abdomen is dark
brown with the exception of the two end rings,
from which the light is sent out; these are sulphur
yellow.
If you live in the southwest middle states, note
the way the lightning bugs give out their light while
on the wing, then when you travel into Yankee
land note the way the lightning bugs there send
out their light and the way they do it down in Mis-
sissippi. Some of them emit light as they make a
downward dash, thus making a streak of lightning,
suggesting the name of lightning bug, while others
seem to glimmer, glow, increase gradually in in-
tensity of light the light growls brighter and then
gradually fades out again.
You should, if possible, collect the fire-flies
from all these different sections of the country,
250 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
and this you can do by trading with boys who live
in other sections ; you will find that the beetles differ
in their markings and some other respects, as well as
in their actions. In Kentucky I have seen the little
girls, after dark, wearing organdie, tarlatan and
lawn dresses between which and their skirts they
had inserted a number of lightning bugs, producing
a very pretty effect as the insects flashed their
signals. I may be wrong with regard to the name
of the cloth the girls wore I am not an expert in
dry-goods- -but it was a thin, flimsy material and
showed the light emitted by the insects almost as
plainly as if there were no cover over them. The
lightning bug furnishes safe and sane Fourth of
July fireworks.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DEAD-BEAT STYLOPS. WEEVILS. PEA WEEVILS AND OTHER
EVILS. BALTIMORE ORIOLE'S FONDNESS FOR GRUB OF
THE PEA WEEVIL. GOAT- OR CAPRICORN-BEETLES. LEAF-
BEETLES. POTATO-BUGS. ELM-BEETLES. UNDESIRABLE
CITIZENS AND LADY-BUGS
DEAD-BEAT STYLOPS
THE Stylops is a warning to all such people as
have a desire to live on someone else, to sponge on
someone else for a living in place of paddling their
own canoe. The Stylops is a degraded dead-beat
and a criminal among insects. Take a look at
Fig. 225 and ask yourself how you would like 'jo
be Stylopized. I want you particularly to look at
the intelligent (?) graceful (?) and fascinating (?)
form of the female Stylops (Fig. 226). You see
she does not need brains, she does not need feet
or antennae, she needs nothing but a digestive tube
because she lives inside the body of a bee (Fig.
227) and the bee has to do all the work and all
the fighting.
When the Stylops is young it has legs and
can run, but it chooses the life of a dead-beat
and the dead-beat life has degraded it.
The young are hatched inside the body of the
251
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
parent and the parent is therefore called viviparous.
She gives birth to about three hundred babies at a
time, not counting those which get away unob-
served. Inasmuch as neither the old lady nor the
old gentleman Stylops have to support their chil-
dren, they can afford to have big families.
In hunting for the female Stylops you must
examine the bodies of bees, where you will some-
times find the head of the fat criminal sticking out
from between the abdomen plates or the belly rings
of the bee.
The male Stylops looks like Mr. Pinheadus
in the comic sheets of the newspaper and he is a
pinhead among the beetles. He has wings and an
Weevils
253
excuse for wing-covers. Mr. Pinheadus dresses in
a black suit with a short brownish-colored vest.
He measures about one-fourth of an inch in length
and much less in intellect.
WEEVILS
As a rule these beetles are very small, but with
few exceptions have exceedingly long noses (Fig.
228). They also have a habit of playing possum
like some of the beetles already described. There
is a pea weevil (Fig. 229) which lays its eggs on
the pea blossoms and the grub (Fig. 230) eats our
green peas. It stays in the seeds of the pea all
winter and comes out the next spring as a weevil
(Fig. 231) unless the summer is hot and dry, in
which case it may come out in the autumn. This
beetle is a short-nosed one and is about one-fifth
254 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
of an inch in length with a rusty black color mixed
with more or less white on the wing covers. A
side view of the insect is shown many times
enlarged by Fig. 229. This weevil was first ob-
served near Philadelphia, from which place it
spread to most of the States where peas are grown.
When the peas are in bloom the beetle appears,
and while the pods are growing rapidly the females
deposit their eggs upon any part of the surface,
making no attempt to insert them within the young
peas. The eggs are of a yellow color and fastened
to the pod by means of a mucilage that the weevil
supplies, which when it dries has the lustre of silk.
" Pods will often be found to have from ten to
twenty such eggs deposited upon them and later
the young larvse may be seen through the thin
transparent shells." The larva soon makes its way
through the pod into the nearest pea, the place of
its entrance being a small spot, like a pin hole.
The larva feeds upon the pea but avoids the germ
and, with a wonderful knowledge of its future
needs, eats a circular hole on one side of the pea,
leaving only the hull as the covering, or ready-
made cocoon. After this it passes into the mummy
or pupa state and at last becomes a beetle. When
Weevils 255
ready to come out the mature insect needs only to
cut the thin husk and it is free.
Up in the elm tree there is a swinging nest.
The head of the family, the gentleman, is colored
orange and black, the colors of Lord Baltimore,
and the bird is known as the Baltimore oriole, which
is very unfair to the bird because he had those colors
thousands of years before Lord Baltimore or his
tribe were born. But, be that as it may, the Bal-
timore oriole is familiar with the habits of the pea
weevil and will split open the pea pods and eat the
grub. Ignorant people think that the oriole is an
enemy to the peas and that he splits open the pods
to eat the seeds.
There is a rice weevil, which feeds on rice,
wheat, and even corn, and a plum weevil, a white-
pine weevil and a long-snouted nut weevil. There
seems to be a weevil for everything and maybe it
would not be far amiss if, in place of weevils, we
called them evils, long-nosed evils. No doubt there
is a reason for their being on earth, but that reason
is not for the good or protection of our gardens.
I doubt if the weevil is of any service to the farmer,
but there is little or no doubt that the farmer is of
great service to the weevil.
256
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
GOAT-BEETLES CAPRICORN-BEETLES
These beetles will not butt you and they will
not make a noise like a nanny goat. They are
called Capricorn- or goat-beetle because their an-
tenna? are long and often bend back in a curve like
the horns of a goat (Fig. 232) . The bodies of the
goat-beetles are generally long and rounded. Their
short heads are armed with powerful jaws. I have
seen one of them grasp
the point of a six-H
lead pencil with his
jaws and hold the pen-
cil erect, a feat of
strength which would
make Samson's work
child's play by com-
parison. They might be called the beetles with the
iron jaws.
Most of the goat-beetles have long legs and
four- jointed feet with wide-cushioned soles. When
you pick one of them up, it will squeak like a little
mouse, but insects' voices do not come from their
lungs; they make a noise by rubbing some of their
joints together. Goat-beetles rub their thorax and
belly- joints together to make the squeaking noise.
Goat- or Capricorn-Beetles 257
The female Capricorn-beetles have a jointed
ovapositor that is, a jointed egg-layer in the end
of their bodies which works like the joints of a
telescope. When they want to put eggs into any
crevice, crack or hole in the wood or plant, they
run out their telescope, insert it in the hole and
then shoot their eggs into the place where they
wish them to be.
The babies are long grubs, whitish and fleshy
with the rings of the body very convex- -that is,
arched-like or as Harris says '' hunched up both
above and below."
Although these babies have a small head, it is
provided with short but very powerful jaws, so
powerful that it can tunnel its way through the
best of solid wood. These borers will make holes
in the logs of your cabin, especially the bottom
logs where the dampness comes up from the
earth. Some of them fill the hole up behind them
with castings known by the name of powder post
and many of them live for several years in the log
before coming out as beetles. Others of the borers
keep the back door open and below it you will find
a little pyramid of fine sawdust.
There are several families of Capricorn-beetles,
17
258
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
but we will consider them as one family to save
time and space. One of the biggest of the goat-
beetles is the broad-necked Prionus( Fig. 233 beetle,
Fig. 234 pupa), a long coal-black fellow with
thick and stout jaws and thick and saw-toothed
antenna?. The goat-beetles choose different trees
in which to make their gimlet hole.
Some of the grubs, like that of the
broad-necked Prionus, are as big
and thick as a man's
thumb ; these live in the
trunks or the roots of
the poplar trees and the
balm - of - Gilead trees.
Fig. 235 is the common
golden-rod beetle.
Like the weevil, they
seem to adapt themselves to all different trees,
being loath to slight any. One of the largest goat-
beetles found in New England is the tickler (Figs.
236 and 237), so named on account of the habit
which he has of waving his long antennae and gently
touching with their tips the surface on which the
beetle walks. When they are courting, they wave
their long antennse around in a graceful manner
Goat- or Capricorn-Beetles
259
and make a creaking noise. Fig. 238 is the pretty
blue-and-yellow elder beetle.
The goat-beetles seem to be often afflicted with
what the doctors call arrested development. That
is, their babies stay babies for a long time. Away
back in 1889 it was reported that the State Ento-
ELDtRBtETLC
mologist of New York had sent to him a beetle
which had bored holes through a kitchen painted
floor at a place called Howe's Cave. The holes in
the floor were about a quarter of an inch in diam-
eter. The beetle itself is the long gray fellow with
black dashes on its wing covers known as the Long-
horn pine borer. The baby larva or grub of this
260 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
pine borer is the one that ruins so much good pine
lumber. In the present case the grubs must have
been in the pine logs before they went through
the saw-mill and were made into flooring boards.
The grub must have taken some Rip Van
Winkle " naps ' which made it sleep and of course
remain a baby for a long time. In the Peabody
Academy of Science at Salem, Mass., one of these
beetles is preserved which had eaten its way out
of a blue bureau which was made fifteen years
before. As showing a greater imprisonment in
furniture, it is traditionally said that in 1786 a
son of Gen. Isaac Putnam, residing in Williams-
town, Mass., had a table made from one of his
apple trees. Out of this table, twenty years
afterward, a long-horned beetle gnawed its way,
and a second one burrowed his way out twenty-
eight years after the tree was cut down.
LEAF BEETLES (CHRYSOMELID^)
The leaf beetles are longer than they are wide;
egg-shaped, sometimes are very thick through the
body, the back is rounded like the half of an egg
which has been split endways, the eyes are promi-
nent, their chests are narrow and cylindrical. The
The Elm Beetle 2(>i
upper part of the hind legs are sometimes divided
in the middle, and the belly has five free rings.
The babies are short, sometimes cylindrical, and
sometimes flattened, often brightly colored, usually
soft and mushy and ornamented with flattened
warts or branching spines. I am giving you these
general items because it is calculated that there
are between eight and ten thousand species and
we can have but a few drawings. The leaf
beetles are feeders on the leaves of plants both
when they are insects in the perfect form and in
the larva state.
ELM BEETLE
Of course, every boy knows some one of the
elm beetles, the larva of which strips all the leaves
from our elm trees, then, while the poor trees are
gathering strength to put out a new crop of leaves,
the elm beetles are getting ready a new crop of
baby beetles to eat up the leaves as soon as they
appear, and the rascals keep up such tactics until
they eventually kill the goose that lays the golden
egg; in other words, the elm tree which furnishes
them their food (Fig. 239, larva; Fig. 240, pupa;
Fig. 241, beetle).
There are a number of so-called elm beetles,
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
one of which is seen in Fig. 241. This fellow is a
yellowish brown with indistinct dark stripes. All
the elm beetles are undesirable citizens and should
have been sent back to Europe when they arrived
at Ellis Island, if that is the place where they did
arrive. To tell the truth, they probably slipped in
at some unguarded port and did not come with
the regular line of immigrants.
But if the newspaper reports can be relied upon,
and I doubt it in this case, the New England elm
beetles are a military lot, who in 1895 came march-
ing into New Haven and also into Chester where
the people one morning met an army coming
through the principal streets of the hamlet. The
report says: "An animated dark ribbon, or the
folds of an immense serpent, billowed on past, in
tiny undulations. It was a wondrous, giant cara-
van of strange worms, belting an entire township,
which, having filled themselves with the produce
of a district further up the valley, were migrating
to a new field and pastures green. Many people
of Chester came into the street and gazed help-
lessly and with much concern at the orderly dis-
ciplined column rolling along the street at a speed
of 400 or 500 feet an hour. The worms (larvse)
The Elm Beetle
were banked densely in their narrow patli and we re-
massed tw r o or three deep in some places while
they marched twenty or thirty abreast. They wore
gray-white bodies with coal-black stripes down the
back, they had black heads and were three-eighths
240
Leaf-eaters.
of an inch in length. It took them all the fore-
noon to go through Chester."
This description sounds like an account of a
hike of army worms. Evidently there was some-
thing doing in Chester, but personally I never saw
264 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
elm beetles doing anything like a Fourth of July
parade or an orderly march. I have seen millions
of them and seen trees stripped by them, but I
never saw them move from one place to another
in an army.
THE GRAPE-VINE FIDIA
This is a very prominent beetle in Missouri ; it is
chestnut brown in color ; that is, its body is a chest-
nut brown but its hair is white and it is all clothed
with short hair. The grape-vine Fidia has decided
ideas on grape-vine leaves as an article of food, and
although it will sometimes eat the leaves of the
wild grape, it will not if it can help it feed on any
other vine than those known as Norton's Virginia
grapes and Concords (Fig. 242).
There is the asparagus-leaf beetle who is a
foreigner and the apple-tree leaf beetle and the
yellow hemlock beetle, and numerous others which
you will find when you take up the study of beetles.
There are also cucumber and squash beetles which
you should know by sight.
THE COLORADO POTATO-BUG
which, of course, is a beetle and not a bug, is
another undesirable citizen, but in this case it is a
The Colorado Potato-Bug 265
native American which was an Aborigine like the
Indians and lived in the mountains of Colorado.
It attracted little attention at first and no one knew
how important it was destined to become in this
world. Very few people noticed these beetles as the
insects sat on the wild plant known to scientists as
the Solanum rostratum which is, I believe, a plant
related to our potato. Fig. 243 shows eggs attached
to leaf; Fig. 244, larva or young; Fig. 245, pupa or
mummy, and Fig. 246, the perfect beetle.
One day, Mr. Potato-bug woke up. Civiliza-
tion and cultivated fields had reached his mountain
home. This was his great opportunity and in
place of a few scattered wild Solanum plants, there
were scattered acres of luscious potato plants ! The
potato beetles literally waded into the garden
plants.
Prosperity had found the potato-bugs and they
followed it up until at length they reached the
Atlantic Coast, where I have seen windrows of
potato beetles washed up on the beach. These
last were the adventurous insects who wanted to
go still further east and were drowned in the
attempt.
It was away back before my readers were born,
266 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
somewhere around 1855 or 1859, that the potato-
bugs began to attract attention by attacking the
neighboring fields and working eastward. But
they took it leisurely and were in no hurry, be-
cause they were living on the fat of the land. They
had nineteen years of riotous living before they
reached the Atlantic Coast. The beetles have
crossed the Atlantic a number of times, but they
w^ere recognized over there as undesirable citizens
before they could multiply or spread.
The Colorado beetle is a striped fellow, con-
siderably larger than a green pea, which is almost
equivalent to saying as big as a piece of chalk. It
is a trifle over a half an inch in length, it is almost
oval and of a yellow color with black stripes and
blotches. Its wings are red and show when it flies.
Red is the sign of danger, of revolution, of energy,
and I think this insect stands for all three (Fig.
246) . Of course it is the larvae which eats the most,
but in this case the beetle also feeds upon the
potato plants.
LADY-BUGS, LADY-BIRDS
They formerly used lady-bugs to cure the
toothache, now they use them to cure the San Jose
Lady-bugs, Lady -birds 267
scale. This is a beetle of course and is neither a
bird nor a bug, nevertheless, as children, we always
said to one of the captured insects:
Lady-bug, lady bug,
Fly away home,
Your house is on fire,
And your children all gone.
It was always a bug to the American children
and a bird in the Sunday-school books and with
>
the European children, but it is a beetle to natur-
alists. Some time ago, an eminent botanist brought
several tiny Oriental lady-bugs from China, but
though he took the best of care of them, many
insects died en route. Even after landing more
of them perished, so that finally only two little
lady-bugs remained to face the great feast of juicy
scale insects.
These two, however, were carefully nourished
/
and trained by the Government and now quite a
numerous progeny is ready to take a stand against
our natural enemy, the scale. The Government in
using lady-bugs for this purpose is following the
method of extermination used in China.
In 1888, Albert Koebele, a collector for Pro-
fessor Riley, discovered in Australia a little lady-
268
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
OF
VCOALIA
Q^TNGWMITt
SCALE.
_ a
bug of the usual reddish brown color (Fig. 247),
which greatly loved to eat scale insects. It seemed
only to care for the fluted scale (Fig. 248).
Mr. Koebele collected a great number of these lady-
bugs and a little of their food, both of which he
packed away on ice in the steamer at Sydney,
Australia. The lady-bugs reached Los Angeles,
California, alive and terribly
hungry after their long trip.
They were let loose on the
scale insects there which
pestered the trees, and they in-
Q stantly began to eat up these
r 7 mischievous pests, one after
another in rapid succession.
Then they began to lay eggs
and if half of the young ones
grew up to be female beetles one lady-bird would,
in six months, have 75,000,000,000 children, each
of them hungrv for scale insects!
o %/
So you see, lady-bugs are of some use in the
world; even the foreign ones like those from New
Zealand do not make undesirable citizens of our
republic.
Never kill a lady-bug, a lady-bird or a lady-
Lady-bugs, Lady-birds
269
beetle and remember that the gentlemen beetles in
this case are always known as lady-bugs too. They
are probably suffragettes, and if they are they are
militants. Among the scientists they are known
as one-spotted lady-bugs, two-spotted lady-bugs, or
nine-spotted lady-bugs, but of course scientists do
not call them bugs ; they have scientific names sug-
gested by the number of spots on the beetle's back.
The lady-bugs always appear to be gentle little
creatures but that is because we are so big they do
not attack us and because we do not watch them
closely enough to see how fierce they are among
plant lice. There is one dusky little lady-bug
known as the Lion Whelp because he is so fierce.
But it is fierce and bloody- thirsty only among plant
lice. So the more we have of these beetles, the
better it is for our rose bushes. Fig. 249 is the
common Maculata; Fig. 250, larva; 251, pupa;
252, perfect Convergens beetle.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BUGS, BEGINNING WITH SOME OF THE LOWEST, MOST DE-
GRADED OF THE BUG FAMILY. PARASITE DEAD-BEATS
AND OUTCAST BUGS. PLANT LICE. SCALES AND APHIDES.
BUGS (HEMIPTERA)
THERE is a very big family of insects properly
called " bugs." They are of all kinds, shapes and
sizes, some of them so different from others that
they do not appear to be relatives. But there are
certain family characteristics; for instance, their
mouths are different from the mouths of the other
insects, and to make them different, the head and
breast is altered to suit the necessity of hitching
on a horny, jointed, hollow beak to the front of the
head. This sucking tube is long, slender, and
tapering when it has to reach far into the substance
from which the bug feeds in order to get at the
juices, or it may be short and stout, according to
the food upon which the creature is dependent.
Another difference is in its wings. As a rule,
the upper half of the wing is horny and thick and
the lower half thin and skinny, more like thin
transparent tracing paper. But with bugs as with
270
AtltAO BOO
DEGENERATES.
YORK
PUBLIC LIE
ASTOR.
= N FOU
Bugs (Hemiptera) 273
other creatures they become degraded when they
become dead-beats and one consequence is the
parasites lose their power of flight and lose their
wings altogether, hence those bugs which infest
the beds in unclean houses, and infest the bodies
of unclean people, very fortunately for clean
people have no wings.
Among the bugs that live in the water also are
some without wings and some with half-wings, and
others with well-developed wings that are good
fliers.
We will take the lowest and most degraded of
bugs first, in order to get over the disagreeable
part as quickly as possible. I suppose it is needless
for me to say that I did not make the sketches
(Figs. 253-256) from live specimens, for I never
made a personal study of these disagreeable in-
sects, but they belong with bugs and must find a
place here, besides which I am talking to boys, and
every boy is liable some time in his life to see one
or more live specimens.
During the war of the States, the Union and
Confederate armies were infested with these things
which they called " gray-backs "; from the general
and his staff down to the private in the ranks,
18
274 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
all sooner or later had some experience with them.
But in times of peace in the United States, only
hoboes, tramps and those unfortunate people who
have to sleep in lodging houses and cannot change
their clothes often, are afflicted with these parasites.
Permanent camps, like lumber camps, usually are
also supplied with them, and so are the wigwams
and huts of savages.
The savages' tepees, however, are not the only
places one must avoid. I remember one time visit-
ing some fishermen's shanties on the coast of Maine.
My companion on this trip is now a celebrated
writer and president of a famous club. He was
always a neat, dapper and well-dressed man; even
in those early days when he was writing stories for
the newspapers he was noted as a well-dressed
young man. I had my suspicions of the fisher-
men's cabins, and when we entered one I declined
the proffered seat, but my companion, being a
genial gentleman and democratic, sat down on
the edge of the bunk in one of those cabins while
he took notes of the yarns the fishermen told him.
When we returned in our sailboat to the rocky
coast where our cottages were located, I imagined
that my legs felt uncomfortable, so I waded into the
Bugs (Hemiptera) 275
ocean where it was shallow, rolled down my long
woollen stockings, took off my sailor's slippers,
rolled a stone on the stockings and shoes to keep
them from being washed away and walked bare-
footed in my knickerbockers to my cottage. There
was no cause for me to remember the incident but
the serious yet comical consequence to my comrade.
I did not again see my friend while I was on
the coast of Maine. The word was passed around
that he was sick and would not see anyone, and it
m)
was not until I met him in New York that I learned
why he had denied himself to all visitors. While
sitting on the bunk in the fishermen's shanty the
poor fellow's clothing had become alive with,- -well
with Fig. 254, and as he had never had any ex-
perience in this line before he did not know the
cause of his trouble until he was covered with an
army of Fig. 254's, and when he discovered them
he was ashamed to tell anyone of his plight. He
had a most serious time ridding himself of these
pests, for they got into his trunk, his bed and the
furniture of his room before he discovered them.
Another gentleman I knew, a dignified, wealthy
New York manufacturer, had the same misfor-
tune happen to him while sleeping on a public
276 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
sofa in a public cabin when all the staterooms were
occupied on the steamer. He also brought the
creatures home with him and spread them broad-
cast before he discovered them.
I tell you these incidents as a warning to you
boys so that you will avoid any similar adventures.
You are liable to pick up Fig. 253 in school or
almost anywhere else, because this is the one that
loves to get into your hair. One careless boy can
spread Fig. 253 all through a school before it is
discovered, and one nurse girl can supply all the
children in the family with them.
Fig. 255 is found on cows, Fig. 257 on low,
degraded people, and Fig. 256 on birds. I have
never had any experience with the sort that infest
cows or people, but in my investigation of birds
I have had my hands and arms covered with the
flat white creeping things which torment our song-
sters with the pricking of their feet and by feeding
upon their feathers. However, these insects are not
built to stay on a human being, and may be brushed
off, or one can rid oneself of them by a change
of clothes. They are fond of birds, not people.
On account of the mouth being built for biting
in place of for sucking, like the other bugs, this
Scale Insects 277
Fig. 256 does not really belong with the others
preceding it, but should be used as the link con-
necting the bugs with the grasshoppers. However,
since the habits and general degraded appearance
of Fig. 256 correspond with the other degenerate
bugs, we place him in their company as that is the
place the boys would naturally expect to find him.
A look at these diagrams is sufficient to show
to what low depth even a bug can fall by becoming
a parasite. As there are many bugs that are
cleanly and interesting, we will leave these degen-
erates with the hope that our readers will never
have occasion to see them anywhere but in pictures.
Their very name is not mentioned in polite
circles, for all agree with Robert Burns that
* * *
a , Sir, is still a
Though it crawls on the curls of a queen."
SCALE INSECTS
For some good reason, while it is considered
bad form to call by name the insects which infest
slovenly beings, we can, without breaking the rules
of propriety, use the same name when it is applied
to plants. Thus we can speak of a plant-louse
(Fig. 258) or of an oyster-shell bark-louse and not
278 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
even shock the sensibilities of the most particular
persons. But the mention of an oyster-shell
bark-louse will sometimes cause a fruit grower and
farmer to use words outlawed in well-regulated
society. The reason of this is, because this scale
does great damage to the fruit trees.
The scale (Fig. 259) is another undesirable
citizen which emigrated from Europe to the United
States. It does the most damage north of the
Mason and Dixon line, and is called the oyster
shell because the little thing, which is only one-
twelfth of an inch in length, is something the
color and very much the shape of a tiny oyster.
You will sometimes find scale insects on a
potted plant in a conservatory, often on the maple
and fruit trees in your yard or orchard, and they
are plentiful in the green-houses of the florists,
where they may be seen plastered on the bark of
the orange and lemon trees. The scale is a sort of
bowl-shaped shell which fits over the insect and pro-
tects it from weather and bug-eating bugs. (Fig.
259 shows the under side of one of these scales.)
Some of the scale insects are very useful. The
Lacca of India produces the stuff called lac, of
which sealing wax and varnishes are made. In Mai-
Scale Insects 279
abar, Bengal, and in Siam, there is a teeny-weeny
mite of a scale from which the beautiful color used
by artists, and known as carmine lake, is derived.
The white cotton scale often infests the branches
of the soft maple, sometimes spreading from them
to the grape-vine, as it did one season, to the grape-
vine in our own back yard.
Another useful plant louse is the Cochineal bug,
which was originally a native of Mexico and was
imported from there to Spain and Algiers. We,
the boys of yesterday, used to buy the dried Coch-
ineal bugs at the drug store with which to color
eggs on Easter Sunday.
The common rose-bug or Aphis is well known
to all my readers who have paid any attention to
the cultivation of roses. The Baltimore oriole,
scarlet tanager and vireo are very fond of these
plant lice and I have watched them by the hour,
going carefully over a plant and picking off the
Jittle green or black bugs which were sucking the
juice out of the garden flowering shrubs. The
Aphis has a couple of tubes sticking out of its
back, through which it can, whenever it feels like
it, squeeze out a sweet substance called " honey-
dew" of which the ants seem to be particularly fond.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LEAF AND TREE HOPPERS. GROTESQUE AND COMICAL
INSECTS. CUCKOO-SPIT. HARVEST FLY, LOCUST AND
SEVENTEEN- YEAR LOCUSTS. A METHUSELAH AMONG
INSECTS. SEVENTEEN-YEAR LOCUSTS ATTEND A BALL
IN KENTUCKY. HOW THEY SAW HOLES IN THE TWIGS.
HOW THEY ARE PREYED UPON BY DRAGON-FLIES AND
WASPS. HARMLESS PLAYMATES. PUPA SKINS AS TOYS.
TREE-HOPPERS AND LEAF-HOPPERS
THESE insects (Figs. 260-264) have apparently
used up all their ingenuity in designing queer
fashions and forms. They indeed are an odd look-
ing tribe, and still more weird forms live in other
countries. They feed on the sap of trees and plants
and they never know when they have enough, at
least some people claim that these insects suck up
so much of the juices that the sap oozes out of their
bodies, often hiding them in a mass of lather or
foam. In England they are called frog-hoppers,
and on account of the foamy material are some-
times known over there as cuckoo-spit, a real pretty
name ( ?) , but I prefer leaf -hopper, don't you?
I am not prepared to say of what this foam is
composed, or whether it is really sap of the tree
280
Cicada, Harvest-Fly, "Locust
281
leaking through the crevices of the insect's body
or whether it is something which the insect itself
produces for the sake of concealment, but I agree
with everybody else when they claim that the leaf-
hoppers are the funniest things to be found among
the insect tribes. The leaf-hoppers or tree-hoppers
d t ""VTVX^V^K
\
Funny Hoppers.
are the sort of bugs which could appropriately in-
habit a ' : bug-house ' for they are certainly a crazy
looking lot (Fig. 260-264).
CICADA, HARVEST-FLY, ' LOCUST '
Here we are again, up against a common and
almost universal name for this well-known insect,
to which it has no right at all because the locusts,
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
you know, are those creatures the boys call grass-
hoppers and they are not even distantly related
to the Cicada, which is a bug pure and simple.
Look at him and you will see the long beak under-
neath his body which marks his race. But, how-
ever troublesome the locust mav be, there is noth-
*/
ing uncanny nor disgusting about him.
The locust is one of the most interesting of
bugs, a good play-fellow and it cannot hurt you;
you may play with it all you choose without offend-
ing it, for it will often sing for you while you have it
between your fingers.
I said that it cannot hurt you and I have good
reasons for supposing that you cannot hurt it, be-
cause seventeen-year locusts have been discovered
blithely singing away entirely unconscious of the
fact that some other insects had eaten up most of
the singer's body.
It is probable that pain, as we understand it,
is entirely wanting in at least many of the insects,
the sense of feeling being developed only suffi-
ciently to cause them to avoid danger, for I have
seen a cruel-minded boy pin a dragon fly to a board
and then feed it with numerous house flies, which
the dragon fly greedily devoured.
Cicada, Harvest-Fly, ' ' Locust ' 283
The seventeen-year locust is a Methuselah
among insects. It lives seventeen years under
ground, where Methuselah did not go until he quit
living. But this locust is seldom seen, while the
other varieties are with us every summer. The
dried shells of the pupa? have heen the playthings
a 66
HtREI AM!
2.6Z
of children ever since this country was inhabited
by white people and no doubt little Indian children
played with them before the white people came.
Probably the red youngsters sat around and
watched the Cicada come out of their hole, as in
Fig. 265, to creep up the trunk of a tree, fasten
284 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
themselves there with their hooked claws, hunch
up their shoulders until they split the back of the
pupa case, then slowly work their way out until
they looked like ghost-bugs riding on the back of
some queer steed (Fig. 266).
I could not resist the temptation of putting
Fig. 266 with the pupa in a horizontal position,
although that is not the position it assumed while
the Cicada was coming out of the shell. The
ghostly locust itself, at this stage, would be hori-
zontal, that is, parallel with the ground, but the
thing looked so funny standing upright that I
allowed the drawing to be placed in that position.
Fig. 267 shows the under side of the harvest fly or
Cicada and Fig. 268 shows the young Cicada.
Once in Kentucky I went to a dance at Latonia
Springs. It was one of those old-fashioned South-
ern affairs where dancing began at two o'clock
in the afternoon, continued until supper time, and
indefinitely thereafter. But the reason I remem-
ber this particular dance is not because of the pres-
ence of many beautiful ladies, although there were
assembled there the prettiest girls in the State
noted for its beautiful women, nor is it because of
the fascination of my partner in the dance, although
Cicada, Harvest-Fly, "Locust" 285
her graces were many, but it is all due to the fact
that this dance happened in the midst of the seven-
teen-year-locust season! The locusts flew through
the ball-room and banged against the men's faces,
the ladies knocked them about with their fans, using
the latter after the manner tennis players use
their racquets. The red- winged bugs were under
foot and made the floor more slippery than did the
wax with which it was covered, and ever and anon
some lady would give a shriek as she suddenly and
frantically clutched at her bosom, then she would
be hustled into the dressing room by the colored
mammy who presided there, and the offending
locust removed.
But this was in Kentucky, not only in Ken-
tucky, but in the good old days in Kentucky, and
no swarm of seventeen-year locusts was ever
hatched that was numerous enough and annoying
enough to spoil the fun or seriously interfere with
the merriment of a Kentucky picnic dance at that
time and place.
The seventeen-year locust, that is, the females,
have a sort of ovapositor (egg layer) (Fig. 269)
equipped with two so-called saws which are really
more like rasp-files. One is on each side, as you
286
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
<26d
may see from the illustration, and the bug can
work them up and down and thus saw holes in
the green twigs wherein to safely hide her precious
eggs. Fig. 270 is a section of the saw cut cross-
wise, made after a drawing by
Grant Allen, showing how
neatly the parts fit together. Fig.
271 shows the twig with the eggs
in it.
The eggs of the seventeen-year
locust hatch and the baby locust
drops or jumps to the ground, and
then with its powerful claws, digs
until he finds a root, where he stays,
sucking the juices of the roots of
the trees, for seventeen long years,
then he comes out in the sunshine
to sing a while, mate and die.
Some time when you are
afield, you may be lucky enough
to see the big wasp or hornet that feeds its
young with the Cicada, which it captures and
paralyzes with its sting, then lays its eggs upon
it and buries it. This is much better than cold
storage. The young are in no danger of ptomaine
Cicada, Harvest-Fly, * ' Locust 9 ' 287
poisoning for the good reason that their meat is
not dead, but alive, and it stays alive until they
themselves kill it by eating it, which of course
happens after they have hatched out of the egg,
though generally speaking I suppose I should say
after it hatches out of the egg.
This is all interesting, but not half so in-
teresting as watching the Digger wasp lug the
poor Cicada over the rough ground, as I have
watched it do, to the trunk of a tree, then ascend
the tree to its lower branches, dragging the be-
numbed and paralyzed Cicada after it until the
wasp reaches the spot where it can spring into the
air and by the aid of its rapidly buzzing wings as a
motor, glide slantingly down to the ground again,
only to again drag the Cicada to another tree and
go through the same process until it reaches the
grave it has dug for the poor harvest-fly.
One time in the mountains of Pike County, I
heard a Cicada singing ' : to beat the band." There
was nothing particularly remarkable about the
musical part, because the dry rasping notes of the
Cicadas could be heard in every direction- -the trees
were full of them. But this one was singing while
it was flying and it was flying in a most peculiar
288 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
manner. In place of winging its way from one
tree to another after the custom of its tribe, it
darted back and forward, this way and that, over
my head, circling and going in spiral in a most
erratic style. At last I discovered that a great big
cruel dragon fly had captured the poor locust and
the locust's song was really a cry for help and that
it was not flying at all, but was carried about by
its captor.
These are the little incidents, boys, which make
the study of insects interesting. It is the life, the
habits and the tragedies of the insect world that
give us moving-picture stories of adventure which
we like to see for ourselves.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
WATER-BUGS. CAKES OF WATER-BUGS' EGGS. WATER
BOATMEN. W 7 ATER SCORPIONS. BEWARE OF WATER-
BUGS' STING. GIANT WATER-BUG. WATER-BUG SUFFRA-
GIST. GENTLE WATER-BUG AS A NURSE GIRL. SKATERS
OR GLIDERS.
WATER-BUGS
IN the outskirts of old Flushing, Long Island,
there is an ancient mill-pond where formerly stood
a quaint, low-ceilinged, dusty mill dating back to
Revolutionary times. Below the mill wheel where
the water ran into the brook was formerly a great
hunting ground for newts, salamanders and other
aquatic animals, but up in the pond itself, in the
black soft mud, was our hunting place for all
manner of small aquatic bugs.
The mill pond is now dignified by the name of
Kissena Lake, and the old mill is gone. There are
walks, drives, rustic stairways and caretakers, and
the place is called Kissena Park.
But down in the mud of Kissena Lake the little
water people still live and thrive. There you will
find the Boatman (Fig. 272) not quite half an inch
long and he makes an interesting specimen for your
19 289
290
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
aquarium, where he will soon make himself at home
and spend his time anchoring himself at the bottom
with his middle legs grasping a pebble while his
arms are doubled up under his chin and his hind
legs all set ready to row like a pair of oars in a
shell boat, as indeed they are, not in a boat, but
they are oars to propel the boat-bug to the surface
when he needs air.
The air he takes down
with him from the surface
in minute silver bubbles,
clinging to the outer edge
of each upper wing, filling
the spaces between the
wings and the belly and
between his head and chest
and sticking to the hairs on
his legs like silver spangles.
The water Boatman is a great diver and he can stay
under water a long, long time without being com-
pelled to come to the surface.
Occasionally these bugs will leave the water and
I have found them flying around the kerosene
lamps in the farmhouse. Water is water to them,
whether it is salt or fresh, and you can find them
272
BOAT-
Enlarged View.
Back-Swimmers 291
in the briny lakes of the West and also in the
sparkling translucent trout streams.
Down in Mexico the natives collect the eggs of
the water boat-bug that inhabits the lakes near
the city of Mexico, and according to Mr. Howard
they make the eggs into cakes, mixing the eggs
with meal before baking them. But here in the
United States we do not eat water-bugs' eggs.
BACK-SWIMMERS
Many insects are supplied with many eyes;
some of the water beetles have eyes on the top
of their heads for looking into the sky and eyes
under their heads for looking down into the \vater.
The extra eyes are called OCELLI. The eyes of the
back-swimmer are triangular and he has no extra
ones scattered about his person. There are several
kinds of water Boatmen, but you will find that out
when you make your collection.
If you pick up some of these back-swimmers
(Fig. 273) with your hands, do not be at all sur-
prised if they j ab you with their beak ; but you need
not be alarmed, don't drop your captive; say
" Ouch! ' but put him in the pail. Some say the
prick from a water Boatman is as painful as a bee
292
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
sting, but this is not so with me I have tried them
both. The back-swimmer's sting only lasts for an
instant and it then is over, but a bee sting hurts
and it hurts real good and strong and lasts some
time. I never have had the bite of a water Boat-
man swell up and become inflamed, but a bee, a
Enlarged view.
yellow- jacket, a hornet or a wasp will raise a great
welt on my skin and pain me enough to make me
cry if I were not a big man and ashamed to do so
childish a thing. But be careful with all water-
bugs, as some of them can sting viciously.
There are about twelve species of back-swim-
mers to be found in the United States and there
is no good history of the life of one yet written.
So here is a chance for my readers to distinguish
themselves.
Water Scorpions
293
WATER SCORPIONS
These water-bugs are called scorpions because
their front legs, with which they grasp their prey,
and their tail combined, give them the appearance
of or rather, suggest, a scorpion. Water scor-
pions have wings (Fig. 274). The front wing is
horny after the manner of bugs and the hind wing
is thin, transparent and skinny. They are very
flat bugs and like the boat-bugs and the back-swim-
mers they prey upon other water creatures. The
water scorpion also has a habit of feeding on fish
eggs. It is said to be able to sting severely. Let
some scientist try the experiment and accept his
report. The report will not pain you.
When you are digging in the mud of Kissena
Lake or almost any other pond in our country, you
are liable to bring out of the bottom an elongated
294
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
water-bug known as the Ran'a-tra. He is a long
slim fellow with long legs and long horny append-
ages at the hind end which it can put together,
making an air tube. Both of these water scorpions
can shut up the front part of their front legs into
the next joint like the blade of a knife into a knife
handle (Fig. 275). The Ranatra, one may see at
a glance, is also a predaceous insect;
those front legs or arms are evidently
made for grabbing and holding other
creatures (Fig. 276).
The writer does not know much
about the personal habits of the
Ranatra, and he very much doubts
if any other writer has made much of
a study of it. The Ranatra does not
go skipping about and attracting attention like the
Boatmen and the back-swimmers ; he looks too much
like a stick to be seen, unless one is looking espe-
cially for him.
THE GIANT WATER-BUG
These are the big fellows that people call elec-
tric-light bugs because they sometimes fly about
the electric lights at night. They are the ones that
The Giant Water-Bug 295
will catch fish in your aquarium as already men-
tioned in the Fore Talk on pages eight and nine.
The giant water-bugs are homely, forbidding-
looking creatures (Fig. 277), and are the biggest
bugs in the bug family. They hide in ponds and
will catch any small live thing, fish or frog that
comes their way, grasping them with those
scorpion-like front claws, jabbing them with their
beak and probably paralyzing them with the poison
spittle which they pour into the wound.
A smaller specimen of a water-bug, built on
the lines of the giant one, lived all this last winter
in my aquarium, and was plastered all over its
shoulders and legs with eggs.
The American observer, Miss Slater, has said
that the female bug has a habit of laying her eggs
on her husband's back. The old gentleman ob-
jects to it most strenuously, but his wife, as the
cowboys say, wears the chaps- -that is, the leather
breeches ; in other words, she is master. Miss Slater
further says that the gentleman bug, although
naturally a lively fellow, feels so disgraced and
depressed with his load of eggs that he will not
even get out of the way of an enemy, apparently
preferring to die than be disgraced by acting the
part of a nurse girl.
296
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
SKATERS OR GLIDERS
The gliders (Fig. 277%) always interest chil-
dren; the marvellous way they skate on running
water without wetting their feet is an endless source
of wonder to the young people.
When the writer was a little fellow he visited a
beautiful country in Ohio. There was a brook
277
about six or seven feet wide, with clear, sparkling
water in which one could see the little fish darting
around, and over the surface of which the whirligig
beetles made spirals and the gliders or skaters,
skimmed. The foot of a glider makes a dent in
the water, just as if the water had a thin skin on
the surface which had been pushed in. This dent
Skaters or Gliders
297
makes a sort of a lens like the lens in a camera or
an opera glass. The sun shining down on the
gliders and on the dents in the water, casts enlarged
shadows on the bottom of the stream and one never
tires of watching these shadows that is, if one is a
little fellow and has not yet had his mind warped
by business, professional duties, or politics.
Gliders
The war of the States broke out, the pretty
country place was changed into a busy camp called
Camp Dennison. One of the writer's brothers was
up there as a Union soldier when the little brook
was again visited, but war is the most unnatural
thing, and it and nature cannot agree. The green
298 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
sward was gone, the beautiful trees were cut down,
the banks of the stream were cut, bruised and torn
by the sharp-shod feet of horses. No more little
fish could be seen and even the whirligigs and
skaters had disappeared, while the stream itself was
nothing but liquid mud.
But this happened a long time ago, and there
are other streams and a new crop of youngsters to
enjoy them. There is a brook on the writer's farm
in Connecticut and there the skaters and whirligigs
and all the little people of the brook flourish and
the author's own little boy and little girl never tire
of feeding the gliders with flies and other insects
which they catch for them.
The water and its inhabitants are very beautiful
and very interesting, but as a rule they seem to be
very savage creatures which inhabit the brooks and
ponds even more so, if possible, than those which
inhabit the land. The Caddice worms and a few
other under-water people live on vegetation, but
the rest of them seem to live on each other. Still,
they are not parasites nor dead-beats; they belong
to the higher order of hunters and fishermen, and
the hunting animal or insect must have intelligence
in order to succeed.
A Few More Bugs 299
If you will dip up a few of the gliders with a
little net made of cheesecloth and put them in your
aquarium, you can tame them and they will learn,
like the whirligig, to take the fly from your fingers.
But you must keep your aquarium covered with a
wire screen or they will escape. Some of them have
wings and can fly and all of them will attempt to
get away by crawling up the sides of the aquarium.
These surface insects seem to dread captivity. The
divers and under-water folk do not seem to mind
confinement, but all of them will become accus-
tomed to their narrow crystal prison and furnish
you a never-ending source of entertainment if you
treat them properly.
A FEW MORE BUGS
Somewhere at the fore part of this book I told
the reader that there were far too many insects in
the United States to squeeze in between the covers
of any one book, and any of the bugs who find their
portraits missing in this volume will please accept
the apologies of the author and the assurance that
no slight was intended. There are a few bugs we
will mention because the boys will look for them.
300
Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
There is the squash-bug (Fig. 278), and his near
relative, the stink-bug (Fig. 279), also the com-
ical little toad bug (Fig. 280). We have omitted
many portraits of the marsh treaders and of the
THE ASSASSIN BUG
notorious bed-bug family, but the less-known as-
sassin bug you will find in Fig. 281.
The assassin belongs in the kissing-bug family.
Some years ago there was a great ado in the news-
papers about the kissing-bugs stinging people on
The Assassin Bug 301
the mouth and causing their lips to swell up. How
much of it was true we do not know, and for the
sake of the people said to be kissed by this bug
we hope that none of the reports were true, because
the bugs accused of promiscuous osculation are the
very useful bed-bug hunters; but however useful
they are, they are the last of the bug tribe which
one would want on one's lips.
My first experience with an assassin bug was
one summer day on Long Island, when I was
idling away a summer's day, leaning on the paling
The Assassin Bug.
The Toad Bug.
fence and talking to my pet red-tailed hawk. While
so engaged I noticed the keen-eyed hawk was
watching something on the top rail of the fence.
Following the direction of its gaze I saw an ugly
small-headed creature of the bug family strolling
leisurely along the top rail. It did not hurry, but
walked as if it had no train to catch. It strolled,
302 Bugs, Butterflies, and Beetles
as I have said, leisurely, until it came to a small
caterpillar hurrying by. Just as it stood over the
caterpillar it stopped, and so did the caterpillar,
for the assassin's stilletto pierced the worm-like
body of the baby moth and ended its career right
there.
According to all accounts, both the kissing-bug
and the assassin-bug can make painful wounds, so
it may be well for the young collector not to ex-
periment with them in that line or to allow the ugly
things to poke their sharp beaks through the col-
lector's skin.
CONCLUSION
This book, boys, was written, not to take the
place of any other book in the field, but to stimu-
late your interest and encourage you to read other
books which take up the subject in a more technical
manner books like ' Caterpillars and Their
Moths," which is brim full of original investigation ;
but beyond all this and above all this is the hope that
this book will encourage you to go afield and hunt
the insects and studv them first hand. Such work
will develop your power of observation.
Boys' eyes are keener than the eyes of men or
grown people. Boys see more, and if their ob-
Conclusion 303
servation is trained they will learn more than
grown people. They will learn to appreciate men
like Thoreau and my good friend John Burroughs,
men like Dr. Frederick Lucas and Dr. Frank E.
Lutz, who give up their lives to the study of nature.
But if you live in the city do not be discour-
aged, the parks and vacant lots are full of inter-
esting specimens, and after you have learned where
to hunt for them you will find them. If this book
of Bugs, Butterflies and Beetles really starts you
on the road as a student of nature the writer will
consider that the book is an unqualified success,
for a nature student is one who feels a sympathy,
a companionship, for all live creatures however
lowly they may be.
Such a feeling broadens the mind and the study
sharpens the wits and teaches one how to observe.
The pursuit of nature will give you a hobby which
will be an interesting and useful pastime, will
lighten the cares of business, lengthen your years,
take you in the open, where you will gain health
and strength, give you good digestion, bright eyes
and above all make you happy, cheerful and com-
panionable ir'ujffic{ \it willfrpJLiniq'' out your char-
**! t J J ' t t "> I
acter so that you jvill; stand high in the estimation
* , , ' , , i i , * *~^
> ' '
i , ' 1 1
> > > ' i ' > ,
> >'ii
. . > , ,
i > i 'ii
, 1 1 > i , ' i
304 Conclusion
of your friends and fellow citizens as does the late
John Muir and our patron saint Audubon.
For, after all, it is only those studies and pur-
suits which make better citizens of us which are
worthy of our pursuit, and in closing I want to
thank my readers for travelling along with me
among the fields and forests, brooks and farms,
which made me feel again like a happy twelve-
year-old boy.
I. * * ' - I I ^
, ,
.
>
INDEX
Alcoholic specimens, bottles
for, 30, 33, 49
American royalty, 100
Emperor miller, 101, 103
Regal miller, 103, 105
American silk-worms, 66
Angel-wing butterfly, 175
An-tio-pa butterfly, 179
Aphrodite butterfly, 172
Army worms, 136
Assassin bug, 300
Back-swimmers, 291
Beetles, 190
Black carpet beetle, 229
Blind Harpalus, 220
Buffalo beetle, 226
Carrion beetle, 221
Caterpillar hunters, 218
Coleoptera, 190, 191
Destructive skin eaters,
226-228
Diving beetles, 204
Elm beetles, 261
Fire-flies, 247
Goat-beetle, 256
Grape-vine beetle, 236
Hobgoblins, 213
Hydrophilidse, 209
Beetles, June-bug, 235
Lady-bug, 266
Leaf-beetles, 260
Potato-bug, 264
Spotted Pelidnota, 236
Stag beetle, 231
Tiger beetles, 211
Tumble-bugs, 239
Water tiger, 205
Weevils, 253
Bella millers, 122
Biblical reference to bugs, 6
Black carpet beetle, 229
Blind harpalus beetle, 220
Boat-bug, 290
Bottles for alcoholic speci'
mens, 30, 33, 49
Brownies, 182, 183
Buffalo beetles, 226
"Bugs," 270
Bugs, biblical reference to, 6
Building a make-believe in-
sect, 18
Butterflies, 147, 166
Caterpillars, 154
Round - winged butter-
flies, 165-189
Swallow-tailed butter-
flies, 147-164
305
306
Index
Butterflies, collection at
Smithsonian Institution, 2
Butterfly envelopes, 48
family, 54, 62
nets, 30, 42
Carrion beetles, 221
Caterpillars, 154
Caterpillar hunters, 218
Cecropia miller, giant, 75,
77
Chloroform bottle, 39
Cicada, 281
Clear- wing millers, 115, 116
Cloth moths, 142
Clymeme tiger miller, 130
Coleoptera, 190, 191
Collecting beetles, where and
how, 195
Collecting insects, equipment
for, 30, 33, 34, 36
Collecting nets, 42
Collection of Butterflies at
Smithsonian Institution, 2
Comparing a beetle with a
boy, 18
Conclusion of moth talk, 144
Copper and blue gossamers,
168
Cuckoo-spit, 280
Cut-worm millers, 140
Cyanide bottles, 38
Cynthia miller, 89, 91
Dead-beat sty lops, 251
Destructive skin eaters, 226-
238
Buffalo beetles, 226
Black carpet beetle, 229
Stag beetles, 231
Goldsmith beetles, 234
Diving beetles, 204
Doodle trap. 196, 197
Drying boards, 30, 36, 40
Elm beetle, 261
Emperor miller, 101, 103
Envelopes for butterflies, 48
Equipment for collecting in-
sects, 30, 33, 34, 36
Fire-flies, 247
Fruit borers, 115
Giant cecropia miller, 75, 77
night-butterflies, 66
water-bug, 294
Goat-beetles, 256
Goldsmith beetles, 234
Gossamers, 168
Grape-vine beetle, 236
Grasping a live beetle, 6
"Gray-backs," 273
Great leopard miller, 131
Green-clouded swallow-tail
butterfly, 161
Grub- worms, 194
Index
307
Harpalus beetle, 219
Hemiptera, 270
Hobgoblins, 213
Hobgoblins' dens 215-216
Hobo caterpillars, 121
How divers carry air under
water, 206
Humming-bird moths, 115
Hydrophilidse, 209
Ichneumon butterfly, 159
lo miller, 95
Isabella miller, 128
Tiger moth, 128
Jug-handles, 108, 109
June-bug or May beetle, 235
L-butterfly, 179
Lady-bugs, 266
Leaf beetles, 260
Leopard millers, 121, 122, 131
Lepidoptera, 57, 111
Lions and tigers of the ponds,
205
Living submarines and hydro-
planes, 207, 209
"Locust," 281
Luna moth, 67, 69
Millers,
Bella miller, 122
Cecropia miller, 75, 77
Millers,
Clear- wing miller, 115,
116
Clymeme tiger miller,
130
Cut- worm miller, 140
Cynthia miller, 89, 91
Emperor miller, 101, 103
Giant miller, 75, 77
Great leopard miller,
131
Hawk miller, 108, 110
lo miller, 95
Isabella miller, 128
Leopard miller, 121,
122
Moon miller, 69
Polyphemus miller, 81,
82
Promethia miller, 86,
87
Regal miller, 103, 105
Salt-marsh miller, 129
Sphinx miller, 108, 110
Squad miller, 115
Tent miller, 132
Tiger miller, 121, 122
Tiger maid miller, 129
Under- wing miller, 121,
123
White death, 115
Yellow-bear, 129
Monarch butterfly, 169
808
Index
Moon miller, 69
Moths, 54, 66
Cloth moth, 142
Humming bird moth,
115
Isabella tiger moth, 128
Luna moth, 67, 69
Notch - winged moths,
108, 112, 113
Sunshine moths, 115
Myrina butterfly, 173
Nets for butterflies, 30, 42
Net bag or poke, 45
ring, 43
Night-butterflies, giant, 66
Notch- winged moths, 108,
112, 113
Parsley worms, 147, 158
Pet beetles, 199
Phaeton butterfly, 174
Pill boxes, 35
Pins, 35
Poison bottles, 30, 37
Poke on net bag, 45
Polyphemus cocoons, 85
miller, 81, 82
Potato bug, 264
Promethia miller, 86, 87
Red Admiral butterfly, 181
Regal miller, 103, 105
Round- wing butterflies, 165
Angel- wing, 175
An-tio-pa, 179
Aphrodite, 172
Brownies, 182, 183
Copper and blue gossa-
mers, 168
L, 179
Monarch, 169
Myrina, 173
Phaeton, 174
Red Admiral, 181
Skippers, 184
\T* 1 "'I
iceroy, 171
White cabbage, 166
Yellow, 167
Rove beetles, 224
Royalty, American, 100
Emperor miller, 101,
103
Regal miller, 103, 105
Sacred beetle of Egypt, 4
Salt-marsh miller, 129
Sawhorn beetles, 243
Scale insects, 277
Scarab, the sacred beetle of
Egypt, 4
Serricorn beetles, 243
Seventeen-year locusts, 283
Silk-worms, American, 66
Skaters or gliders, 296
Skipper butterfly, 184
Index
309
Smithsonian Institution, col-
lection of butterflies at, 2
Snap-bugs, 245
Specimen box, 46
Sphinx and hawk millers,
108, 110
Spotted pelidnota, 236
Squash bug, 300
Squash vine miller, 115
Stag beetles or pinch bugs,
231
Stink-bug, 300
Sty lops, 251
Sunshine moths, 115
Swallow-tailed butterflies,
147, 156
Green clouded swallow-
tail, 161
Ichneumon, 159
Tiger swallow-tail, 162
Zebra swallow-tail, 164
Tent millers, 132
Tiger beetles, 211
millers, 121
maid miller, 129
Tiger swallow-tail butterfly,
162
Tigers of the ponds, 205
Tobacco-worms, 108
Tree-hoppers, 280
Tumble-bugs, 239
Under-wing millers, 121, 123
Viceroy butterfly, 171
Water-bugs, 289
scorpions, 293
tiger, 205
Wax model of insects, 18
Weevils, 253
Whirligigs, 201
White cabbage butterfly, 166
death, 115
Yellow bears, 121, 122, 129
butterfly, 167
Zebra swallow-tail butterfly,
164
