256 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 



the last, and did not move or look around, until 

 there came the slightest of tugs at my knee, and 

 into view clambered one of those beings who are 

 so beautiful and bizarre that one almost thinks 

 they should not be. My second singer was a 

 beetle — an awkward, enormous, serious, brilliant 

 beetle, with six-inch antennas and great wing 

 covers, which combined the hues of the royal 

 robes of Queen Thi, tempered by thousands of 

 years of silent darkness in the underground 

 tombs at Sakhara, with the grace of curve and 

 angle of equally ancient characters on the hill 

 tombs of Fokien. On a background of olive 

 ochre there blazed great splashes and characters 

 of the red of jasper framed in black. Toward 

 the front Nature had tried heavy black stippling, 

 but it clouded the pattern and she had given it up 

 in order that I might think of Egypt and Cathay. 

 But the thing which took the beetle quite out 

 of a world of reasonable things was his forelegs. 

 They were outrageous, and he seemed to think 

 so, too, for they got in his way, and caught in 

 wrong things and pulled him to one side. They 

 were three times the length of his other limbs, 

 spreading sideways a full thirteen inches, long, 

 slender, beautifully sculptured, and forever 



