BEETLES 219 



swirling clouds. As soon as they touch the glass 

 or shade, however, so badly are they put together, 

 they at once shed their wings, and run helplessly 

 about, to be ignominiously swept into the dust-pan 

 and carried away. 



Beetles of many kinds abound, from the immense 

 variety the size of a well-proportioned mouse which 

 occurs in the forests and lays its eggs in elephants' 

 dung, to the tiny, lustrous, aniline green copra- 

 beetle which is a devourer of the product of the 

 coconut palm and — other things. Then that dis- 

 gusting form the Cockroach. If you should come 

 dispassionately to reflect on the raison d'etre of 

 many of these futile forms of the lower insect 

 world, you are forced sadly to the conclusion that 

 they are nothing more nor less than a blot upon 

 the creation. Particularly so is this the case with 

 the noisome, loathly Cockroach, which has formed 

 such an attachment to man that he has said in 

 effect, " Where thou buildest thine abode, there 

 shall be mine also, I will eat of thy bread, and of 

 everj^hing else that is thine for ever." And he 

 has kept his word. I speak with a full sense of 

 my responsibilities when 1 say I have never known 

 a house in this part of Africa from which this 

 creature could be excluded. It is true that modern 

 mosquito-proofing keeps out the horrible insect 

 during its flying stage — that period when life was 

 one long martyrdom, and you heard every few 

 moments as you sat at dinner the flop of some 

 two-inch foetid monster as it alighted on the table 

 before you, or on the nape of your neck behind. 

 I have seen ladies hurriedly leave the table to stamp 



