Rural School Leaflet 



883 



THE LADY BEETLES 



Anna Botsford Comstock 



.ERSONS who do not know about the 

 small brothers of the fields have an 

 idea that all insects are injurious to our 

 human interests. This, however, is a 

 very unjust view; there are many insects 

 that spend their whole lives doing us favors, even 

 though we show no gratitude. Some of these 

 beneficial insects belong to the family of 

 ladybirds, as these small beetles are called. 

 In fact, all except one or two members of this 

 family are very friendly indeed to the gardener, 

 the fruit grower, and the farmer; for instead of feeding on plants, they 

 feed on the plant lice and the scale insects that infest plants. 



The ladybirds, or ladybugs, are small beetles that look like pills of various 

 sizes cut in half with legs attached to the flat side. Some species are 

 brownish red with black spots; some are black with reddish or yellowish 

 spots. Throughout the land, whenever a country child sees one of these 

 ladybird beetles, he addresses it thus: 



" Ladybird, Ladybird, fly away home. 

 Your house is on fire, your children are burning." 



But Ladybird is not at all frightened at this piece of news, because she 

 does not know where her children are, and I am afraid she would not 

 know one of them if she met it. She performed her last duty to her 

 family when she laid a cluster of yellow eggs on the underside of a leaf of 

 some plant infested with plant lice or scale insects; and from every one 

 of these eggs hatched a little creature that is very different in appearance 

 from its mother. It is a long, rather flat, velvety creature, covered with 

 warts and short spines and black or brownish black in color, ornamented 

 perhaps with some bright-colored spots. It moves around briskly on 

 six stiff little legs, one pair to each of the three segments of the body next 

 ■to the head. The first thing this little creature does is to hunt for a stupid 

 plant louse or scale insect and promptly seize it with strong jaws and 

 chew it with great gusto, not leaving even a leg to tell the tale. A great 

 many of these insects must share a like fate before the larva ladybird 

 grows enough so that its skin is too tight for comfort. When this occurs 

 the old skin is shed and a new skin takes its place, giving the greedy young- 

 ster plenty of room, so that it starts on a nev^'' crusade against the plant 



