Little Busybodies Part 12

They lie very, very quiet, with wings, antennae, and legs folded under the body."

"What does pupate mean?" asked Betty, who was poking the fire and listening hard to every word the old man spoke.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A._ Coc.o.o.n of a polyphemus moth.

_B._ Coc.o.o.n of a cecropian moth.]

"It means just that--to lie quiet and change. They do it in different ways. Some crawl down into the ground and some pull out their silky hairs, and with these and the silk they can spin they make a soft, silken coc.o.o.n. Some make over their last skin into a hard covering. The monarch b.u.t.terfly does this.

"And there is a troublesome creature called the clothes moth--Mrs. Reece can tell you about that--who lays its eggs on anything woollen it can find. After a while a baby clothes moth, a whitish worm, hatches out.

Then this little fellow eats the fibres of the wool, and finally spins a coc.o.o.n out of these fibres and its own silk.

"Some caterpillars are leaf-rollers--that is, when they pupate they roll over the corners of a leaf, make themselves a neat hammock, and there lie quite still in a cool and comfortable place to sleep."

Poor Peter had tumbled over, his head on Mrs. Reece's lap. Betty and Hope, wide awake, were thinking just as much of the wonderful tent in which they were to sleep as of the b.u.t.terflies and moths. They were wide awake enough to point their fingers at sleepy Peter.

"I think there is one kind of moth," said Mrs. Reece, stroking Peter's silky hair, "that spins something almost as soft as this."

"Softer," affirmed Ben Gile; "and that is the silk-worm."

"Does the caterpillar make the silk our dresses are made from?" asked Betty.

"Yes, indeed. The mother moth is a creamy-white. She lays several hundred eggs; from each of these eggs comes a little worm. These little worms have been cared for so long by men that they don't know how to take care of themselves any more.

"They like to eat the leaves of the mulberry-tree. If these leaves are not to be found they will sometimes eat lettuce. For forty-five days they eat as fast as they can, which is a good deal faster than greedy children can eat.

"Every ten days or so they cast aside their old skin and come out in a new one. After the last moulting of the skin the worm begins to spin a coc.o.o.n about itself. At first the coc.o.o.n is not very smooth, but in a while the worm gets well started and spins the rest of it with one long, silky thread."

"Isn't that wonderful!" exclaimed one of the guides. "I suppose that silk is finer than the finest trout-line."

"A hundred times finer," answered Ben. "Usually it is three hundred yards long. Before the pupa has a chance to make its way out, and so destroy the long, silken thread, the man who has taken such care of the worm drops the coc.o.o.n into boiling water, which kills the pupa at once.

Then the precious silk thread is carefully unwound on to little spools, and is ready to be made into thread or spun into silk.

"And now, children, it's time for you to spin your dreams. Shake up Peter, and we'll get ready for the night. Too bad to leave this fire, but we can have one as often as we want."

The boys slept like tops, but there were two little girls who lay rather wide awake most of the night, listening to the strangest grunting sounds in the world.

XIII

STORM-BOUND

After two glorious days of exploring--"exploricating," the guides called it--the children went to bed early, expecting to make an early start to hunt partridge. They were so tired from their good times that for two or three hours they slept like tops.

But in front of the cabin Ben Gile and Mrs. Reece and the other guides were looking at the night sky anxiously. The lightning flashed more and more vividly, black clouds were coming nearer and nearer. What was a distant rumble soon became a near-by, long undertow of ominous sound.

Nearer and nearer it came, until every flash was followed by a sound like ripping.

Mrs. Reece was very uneasy, for she did not like to have the children in the tents alone. But soon Betty and Hope came scampering through the dark to the cabin. They were surprised to see the older people up.

Before long the boys also came to the cabin rubbing their eyes, yawning, and pretending not to care whether there was to be a cyclone or a cloud-burst.

For a while all sat waiting for the storm to break. When it did break, what torrents of rain and wind descended! How the trees groaned and cracked! How the rain roared upon the s.h.i.+ngled roof, and how the wind howled through the mountain valley!

"Well," said Ben Gile, "let's have a fire in the fireplace, then we can have a crackle of our own." He had noticed how nervous Mrs. Reece grew, and that the little girls were watching her. He could not help thinking that it was foolish, even wicked, to waste strength in fear of something which no one of them could stop. "Build a fire, boys." And build a fire they did--a royal good blaze. "Now throw on some of those pine-cones you children gathered." There was a flare in the cabin almost as bright as the incessant flare of the lightning outside. "I'll tell you what we'll do," he continued, "we will have a midnight spread. We will have some of Tom's famous flapjacks. Mrs. Reece, don't you want to make mola.s.ses candy, and then the children can pull it."

The storm was forgotten by the children as, with many squeals of glee, they rushed into this midnight frolic.

"And now, Ben," said Tom, the guide, "I've just found something; I have it in my hand. I propose, Ben, while the rest of us work, that you make one of your stories out of it, and tell us all about it."

Tom opened his hand, and the children crowded around to see. There was a shout of laughter.

"Why, that's only a dead June-bug!"

"Who wants to know about a June-bug?" exclaimed Jimmie, much to the discomfiture of the guide, who knew a great deal about moose and deer and bears and beavers, even if he didn't know much about a June-bug. The guides had profound respect for the schoolmaster, Ben Gile, who was really too wise and kind to laugh at another's ignorance. But this is another story, and Jimmie learned better in the years to come.

"You're right, Tom," said Ben, "to want to know. Sometimes it's about these commonest things folks know the least. When I was a boy it was always so with me. There are several facts about a June-bug that are interesting. First, it is not a bug at all; and, second, it comes in May and not in June. It is really a May-beetle, and a great, clumsy, buzzing, blundering fellow it is, as careless about its appearance as it is about the way it enters a room. You know the old adage, 'Haste makes waste'? Perhaps it's the haste that makes the June-bug's untidiness.

Beetles have hard wing covers--see these little sh.e.l.l-like casings?--to cover the more delicate wings underneath. The June-bug has wing covers, too, but it never keeps its best wings tucked in. They are always hanging out in a crumpled way. These bugs eat the leaves of the trees, and their children, little, fat, white grubs with h.o.r.n.y heads, nibble, as they crawl around under the surface of the earth, the tender roots of the gra.s.s and the strawberry plants."

"Why, Ben, you've told me more already," said Tom, "than any dullard like me could ever learn from a book. To think it's a beetle! But I might have known from looking at it. Are all the beetles harmful?"

"Most of them are pests, and do a good deal of damage. Its cousin, rose-beetle, is pretty, her body covered with soft, yellow hairs, and she has rose-colored legs. But handsome is as handsome does, and rose-beetle causes more damage than her clumsy cousin, for Rose feeds on rose-bushes as well as on fruit trees. Indeed, almost everything that comes to her mill is grist. She's as bad--and worse--than the elm-beetle."

By this time the cooking mola.s.ses smelled so good, the cabin fire roared so pleasantly, and the smell of the flapjacks Adam was frying was so appetizing, that the children had quite forgotten the storm outside, and were having one of the jolliest frolics of their lives--one they never forgot.

"Tell us something more, sir," urged Jack, "about the beetles."

"There is one comical fellow who makes me think of Peter. In the books it is called a click-beetle, but it is also called a skip-jack because of the somersaults it can turn. On the under side of its thorax is a spine resting on the edge of a hole. This funny beetle, by pus.h.i.+ng the spine down over the hole and then letting it go, throws itself up in the air with a sharp click."

"Oh, I know them," called Hope, "for I have seen them doing it, but I never knew how they did it!"

"And now," said Master All-Wise, very soberly, "after I tell you that the children of the click-beetle are called wire-worms, and that they eat and kill the roots of plants, I want to tell you about a beetle no one of you has ever seen--a most extraordinary beetle."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _A._ Lady-beetle.

_B._ Burying-beetle.

_C._ Oil-beetle.]

All were attention at once.

"Many years ago there lived away out in California a little, round, brownish, striped beetle, which crawled about and ate heartily of a plant called the sand-bur. One day one of the family happened to wander up to a nice, juicy potato plant. After eating its fill it probably looked up some of its brothers and sisters, and told them about these good plants growing in the fields. With one accord they left the sand-burs and began to eat the potato plant. Farther and farther they wandered, until thousands of them reached the eastern part of our country, eating the potato plants wherever they found them on the way.

Now, these beetles are to be seen everywhere in our country, spoiling crop after crop."

By this time Jack's eager face was smiling, and he was looking questioningly at Ben Gile.

"What kind of a beetle do you suppose it was?" asked the old man.

n.o.body knew. At last Jack ventured, "Was it a potato-bug, sir?"

"Yes."