Buildincj a Make-Believe Insect 23 



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are at work; of course it should have some legs. 

 These we will make by pinching and flattening the 

 sides of the first joints behind the head * (Fig. 6), 

 after which we will cut the flattened side into six 

 flaps (Fig. 7) ; next we will roll these flaps be- 

 tween oin* fingers and make legs of them, then we 

 push the tail towards the head, thus crowding the 

 rings together in the form shown by Fig. 8. Our 

 wax thing now begins to look like an insect. A 

 very low and degraded form, it is true, but we must 

 have a creature with a hole for its mouth and a tube 

 for its stomach and six legs with which to walk. 

 Most insects, however, are supplied with wings of 

 some sort and these may be easily made; we have, 

 however, gone far enough to understand, in a gen- 

 eral manner, the construction of the little creatm'cs 

 about which we are to talk througli the rest of the 

 chapters of the book. 



Of course you know that every live thing which 

 is not a plant is an animal. A beetle, a worm, a 

 fly, a bug are animals. The creatures you gener- 

 ally call animals, such as dogs, cats, horses and 

 elephants, are animals, too, but they belong to the 

 family of milk-givers called mammals. But bugs, 



* See illustration, page 19. 



