Half a dozen boys

by Anna Chapin Ray

"A good start for our museum, sure enough!" while the boys settled themselves on the piazza rail, and pulled various boxes from their pockets.

"Here are five moth-millers and a hornbug," announced Sam, producing some rather dilapidated specimens, for the hornbug had lost three legs, and of the moths, one was minus both antennæ, and another had a great slit in one wing.

"I've got eight moths," said Phil. "I picked them up under the electric light. They're real good ones, only they are singed a little. I s'pose that's what killed them. And here," diving into his trousers pocket, "is a bumblebee my father killed yesterday. Oh, dear! His head's come off. Can't we stick it on?"

Ted had also brought his share of mangled veterans, and Rob showed three or four moths, quite well prepared, and a pair of golden yellow June bugs.

It was with some difficulty that Bessie preserved her gravity as she saw the ruins spread out before her. But, always mindful that much of her influence over her boys lay in her hearty sympathy in all their hobbies, she looked them over with an air of deep interest, and then sent Rob into the library for a certain book that not only had fine pictures of all sorts and conditions of insects, but also gave full instructions for their capture and preservation.

"If you are going to do anything about it, my boys," said she, "you would much better start in the right way at the very first, so we can have a really good collection; and then we can try to have a full one, of all the insects in the region. If you must collect, this is better than the barbarous, cruel habit so many boys have of stealing birds' eggs, too often nest and all. The eggs themselves won't teach you anything about the birds; while from these, you can get some idea of the life and habits of these little creatures."

"Just look at this one!" exclaimed Ted, pouncing on one of the two perfect specimens, a pale green lunar moth. "Oh, dear! There goes one of his wings. What are these fellows so brittle for?"

"That is another thing. You mustn't handle these specimens or they will break. Now, let us see what we can find out about them."

And the next hour was spent in a pleasant talk about the form and habits of these tiny creatures, a talk that the boys never forgot, for it taught them, for the first time, the great plan of creation, that develops in each living creature the bodily form which will help it most to live its little life, an explanation so clearly and vividly given that even Fred felt no need of the pictures to understand the mechanism of their small bodies.

The collecting fever spread, and the boys were often seen skipping about the fields, or plunging headlong over fences, net in hand, in pursuit of some gaudy butterfly. Bessie tried faithfully to make the boys feel that the main object was not the catching and killing the insects; but that this was only to help them to a fuller understanding of the nature and varieties of their prey. Their whole energy was directed in the line of insects, and boxes of specimens so rapidly collected, that the prospect was that the whole Carter family would soon have to move out of the house, to make room for the army of moths and beetles, cocoons and butterflies, that speedily accumulated. Even long-suffering Mrs. Carter protested when, one day, on the piazza, she chanced to knock down a box containing a huge green worm that Rob had carefully provided with food and air-holes, and shut up, in the hope that he would spin himself into a chrysalis; for, as the cover of the box fell off, out dropped, not only the captive worm, now dead, but also a multitude of little yellow wrigglers, that quickly squirmed away.