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 antenne 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 
