THE MONSTERS OF OUR HACK YARDS 



595 



egg its mother laid and from wliicli it 

 emerged as a tiny little creature in the 

 image of this grub, growing and manu- 

 facturing from the leaves it eats enough 

 nitrogenous matter so that when it 

 emerges again from the yolk-like sub- 

 stance of its cocoon it will be a full- 

 grown beetle, for it must be remembered 

 that once made the beetle never grows. 

 This wonderful process is the same 

 which is gone through by every flying 

 insect that has a grub or caterpillar stage. 



ONE OF THE TwiG-PRUNERS (Blaphidiofi 

 atomaricum) , page 589 



The long-horned beetles, as they are 

 called, are remarkable for the length of 

 their antenuce and their eyes of many 

 facets, which almost encircle the anten- 

 nae at their base. They have, like other 

 beetles, two lives, so to speak, and their 

 grub-life is spent inside some twig or 

 branch, burrowing and living on the 

 juices which their stomachs extract from 

 the sawdust made by their jaws. They 

 kill the twig they burrow in, so that the 

 wind blows it to the ground, and they 

 go through their transformation on the 

 ground. The story is told of a long- 

 horned beetle, belonging to a different 

 species, that lived for years in its larval 

 stage, burrowing patiently into the dry 

 wood of a boot-last or shoe-stretcher, 

 trying vainly to get enough nourishment 

 out of it to make a beetle of itself. 



THE PREDACEOUS GROUXD BEETLE {Chlcc- 

 nins ccstk'Hs), page 590 



This creature almost any one will 

 recognize as a beetle. It is built for run- 

 ning, and its jaws are made for fighting. 

 You have only to catch one and watch it 

 open and shut its jaws to realize that it 

 would bite you if it could. But for all 

 that it is a great friend, for it is what the 

 entomologists call predaceous, and at 

 night or at twilight it hunts everywhere 

 for the larvse of insects which attack the 

 plants we live on. Tn its larval state, in 

 which it looks for all the world like a 

 centiped without the "ped," it burrows 

 in the ground in search of the plant de- 

 stroyers, which think to escape notice by 

 getting under the cover of the soil. They 

 are by nature, then, opposed to the vege- 



tarians, the herbivores, and hunt them 

 wherever they are likely to occur. 



When you see a black or dark-br9wn 

 beetle running swiftly from under some 

 stone or log which you have just turned 

 over and which makes faces with its jaws 

 as though it would chew your fingers 

 when you pick it up, you can be quite 

 sure in eight times out of ten that it is 

 one of these carabidse or predaceous 

 ground beetles, and if you let it drop 

 from your fingers you may be saving the 

 life of a friend, because some day it may 

 eat the worm which, lying close to some 

 pet flower of yours, had planned to cut 

 it off beneath the ground. 



It is the hardest thing in all the world 

 to understand how balanced is this scale 

 of foe and friend. One year there is a 

 wiping out of our insect friends through 

 frost or floods or microscopic disease, 

 and, freed thus from the check which 

 kept their numbers down, the foes to our 

 plants can multiply to such an extent that 

 nothing we can do will save our crops 

 from total failure. Next year perhaps 

 the parasitic beetle, finding such a wealth 

 of food to live upon, increases and holds 

 well in check the pest which last year ate 

 up all our plants. Each wave of insect 

 pests could be explained, no doubt, if all 

 the facts were known, and nowadays no 

 one who knows what modern agriculture 

 means will fail to reckon on the risks 

 from losses caused by these pests. 



OXE OF THE JUNE-r.UGS OR M.\Y BEETLES 



(Lachnostcrna quercus), page 592 



Of the wild creatures of our back 

 yards, none is better known than this 

 hard-shelled buzzing creature, which 

 whirrs into the circle of light around 

 your lamp and commits suicide, if you 

 will let it. by flying into the flame. 



It is one of the so-called June-bugs, or 

 May beetles, which every boy and girl 

 knows, and is not the June hectic of 

 which the larva was shown j^reviouslv. 



Its hard, pitted skeleton covers it com- 

 pletely, and it is most interesting to watch 

 it open its wing covers with great de- 

 liberation, unfold the wings which are 

 carefully stowed away beneath them, and 

 holding its wing covers elevated so they 

 will not interfere, start the transparent 



