THE JUNE-BUG
“It is a discovery of no small importance in your eyes, my young friends, when you find the first June-bug of the season on the young foliage. In the evening you get together in a corner and talk about it, you make plans for the morrow, and all your conversation is about the June-bug that has just arrived. You arrange to get up early the next day and shake the trees in order to bring down the sleeping insects; you get ready a box, pierced with holes, to receive the captives, and put in a handful of fresh leaves for them to feed on.
June-bug
“At the first streak of dawn you are up; you visit the willows, the poplars, the hawthorn hedges wet with dew. It is a fruitful hunt: the June-bugs, benumbed by the chill of night, fall like hail when you shake the branches. Soon you have a half a score of them, then a dozen, then twenty. It is enough. You go back to the house with your prisoners fluttering and struggling in the foot of an old stocking, in your [[243]]handkerchief, or in your cap. You bring a supply of green leaves.
“And now for your experiments! You tie a long string to the leg of one of the beetles and put the insect in the sun. It inflates and deflates its belly, raises its wing-sheaths, and expands its wings. There it goes, into the air. Your experiment has succeeded. These delights of the June-bug season, my children—enjoy them as long as you can. Other pleasures pale beside them. In view of the amusement it affords you I gladly welcome the June-bug. But turn now to a less pleasing aspect of the matter.
“Like every other insect, the June-bug is at first a grub. In that form it lives three years in the ground, whereas in its final state, when it is found on trees and bushes, it lives but two or three weeks. This grub or larva is commonly called the white grub, also the fish-worm, and sometimes the ground-hog. Look at it carefully for a moment and tell me what you see.”
“I see,” answered Louis, “a fat, big-bellied worm, slow in its movements, and fond of lying curled up on its side. It is of a whitish color with a yellowish head.”
“Yes, and what else?”
“It has six legs, not made for running on the surface of the ground, but for crawling underneath; and it has strong jaws for biting the roots of plants. Its head is capped with horn to help it in boring through the soil.”