210 UP AND DOWN THE BROOKS. 



dotted oak-leaves in the spring. They are easily 

 found, after your eye is once used to looking for 

 them, and in May you will find in your paper- 

 covered bottle small, light-colored moths, looking 

 much like clothes-moths, but smaller if anything, 

 although had I seen them fluttering in the house 

 I should have pronounced them those Tineans of 

 which all good women have such a dread. But 

 look at the oak-moths closely and you will see 

 that their wings are marked with yellow. 



In April on that old willow by the fence where 

 the path is just wide enough for one to walk with- 

 out tumbling off, I found a lady-bug. Not the 

 common kind, but the smaller black variety with 

 a red spot on either wing. Chilocorus is my 

 lady's genus, I believe. The one I found was 

 either of the same variety as the " twice-stabbed " 

 lady-bug that has rendered such service in warring 

 against the scale-insects in California orchards, or 

 was next cousin to that useful beetle. Who was 

 it that first suggested that one or two mashed 

 lady-bugs put into the hollow of an aching tooth 

 would stop the pain ? I read of a naturalist who 

 attempted curing his tooth-ache with this remedy, 

 and he professed to have been relieved. Little he 

 deserved it, though, according to my ideas. 

 What ! Shall a mortal take the Marien-Kdfer, 

 the " Lady-beetles of the Virgin," the Vetches de 

 Dieu, and smash them to cure a vile tooth-ache ! 

 " To what base uses we mav return, Horatio ! " 



