mong my somewhat numerous correspondence from young people, I recall several wondering inquiries about a certain fat floundering "beetle," as "blue as indigo"; and when we consider how many other observing youngsters, including youngsters of larger growth, have looked upon this uncouth shape in the path, lawn, or pasture, will speculate as to its life history, it is perhaps well to make this floundering blue beetle better acquainted with his unappreciative neighbors.
THREE VIEWS OF HELPLESS BEETLES.
What are the lazy blue insects doing down there in the grass, for there are usually a small family of them. With the exception of their tinselled indigo-blue coat, there is certainly very little to admire in them. But what they lack in beauty they make up for in other ways. There are many of their handsomer cousins whose history is not half as interesting as that of this poor beetle that we tread upon in the grass. His neighbor insect, the tiger-beetle, running hither and thither with legs of wonderful speed, and with the agility of a fly on the wing, readily escapes our approach; but this clumsy, helpless blue beetle must needs plead for mercy by his color alone, because he has no means to avert our crushing step. A little girl who met me on the country road recently summed up the characteristics of the blue beetle pretty well. The portrait was unmistakable. "I've got a funny blue bug at home in a box that I want to show you," said she; "he's blue and awful fat, and hasn't got any wings, but when you touch him, he just turns over on his back, and trembles his toes and leaks big yellow drops out of his elbows." I have shown her beetle—three views of him, in fact—about the natural size, one of them on his back and "leaking" at his elbows, for such is the infallible habit of the insect when disturbed—a trick which has also given him the name of the "oil beetle." He is also known as the indigo beetle.
But of what use can such a queer beetle be to himself or any one else, a beetle that is not only without wings, but is so fat and floundering that he can hardly lift his unwieldy body from the ground, and which, upon being surprised, can only "play possum," and exude great drops of oil (?) upon our palm as we examine him.
But as he pours the vials of his wrath upon us he would doubtless fain have us understand that he was not always thus unable to take care of himself, that he was not always the clumsy crawling creature that he now is. As he lies there on his back, the yellow oily globules of surplus "elbow grease" swelling larger and larger at his leaky elbows, and one by one falling on the paper beneath him, we may almost fancy the monologue which might be going on in that blue head of his.
"Yes, I am indeed a clumsy creature," he might be saying, as he stares upward into our faces with fixed indigo eyes, "and my cumbersome body is a burden. But I was not always what you now see. Ah, you should have seen me as a baby! Was there ever such a lively, acrobatic, venturesome plucky baby as I, even when I was a day old? Shall I tell you some of my feats? Everybody knows me as I am now; but I have taken care that few shall learn my earlier history. It takes a sharp eye to follow my pranks of babyhood, and no one has been smart enough to do it yet, but I will at least let you into the secret of my life as far as it has been found out. I am little over a year old. I was born under a stone in a meadow last April, when I crept out of a golden-yellow case so small that you could hardly see it. I believe your books say I was about a sixteenth of an inch long at that time. Ah! when I think of what I was and what I could do then, and look at what I am now, I sometimes wonder whether that lively babyhood of mine has not all been a mocking dream."
DOWN AMONG THE BUTTERCUP LEAVES.