AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
[September, 
358 
TOYS <k (B©]L¥MMSc 
and without, using carefully their eyes and other senses, 
to find an endless source of instruction. Now wo 
GO BACK TO OUR MUD BALL 
bushel. But I can not tell you more about the damage 
this grub docs. Like other insects, it 
HAS ITS NATURAL ENEMIES. 
TTBic Doctor’s 'S'jiISi.'j. 
Last month I left our regular talks about Matter, and its 
properties, and took up the making and sending up of 
Balloons. When one is off of the track, it is sometimes 
easier to stay there than it is to get back again, and as 
the weather is quite too hot for much exertion, I think 
we will remain off of the track for another month at least. 
We have heretofore been talking about Matter in its solid 
form, and though there is much more that might be said, 
we must get ahead and see what liquids and gases, or 
WATER AND AIR, 
have to interest us. These are matters that require more 
study and thought than either you or I care to give in 
these mid-summer days, and for the present month we 
will, by way of variety, talk about the contents of a box 
that I found upon my table a few mornings ago. The 
box came, and with it a note which in brief asked— 
“ What is it?” A question that conies almost every day in 
tbe year, and with reference to such a variety of tilings! 
That is right, young people, when they meet with a 
thing that they do not understand should ask—‘’What 
is it?”—and if you begin to ask this while young, let me 
assure you that you will never get so old that you will 
not need to ask the same question of your young days— 
“ what is it ?” 
1 do not say this to discourage you—far from it—for it 
is one of the great charms of the study of natural ob¬ 
jects, that the whole can never be learned, but there is 
always some new tiling, and the more we know the 
greater is our desire to learn. But to our box. Upon 
opening it there were found several curious balls of dry 
earth, of the shape and size shown in figure 1, as if some 
one had rolled up mud into pellets 
and allowed it to dry. An answer 
to the question—“ What is it? ” 
might have been “ Mud Balls.” 
But in such matters we must learn 
all that such a thing can teach us, 
and if the outside tells us nothing, 
the next step is to see what is 
within. When you come across a 
thing that is quite-new to you, 
you must learn about it all that 
1- iulJ your unaided senses will tell 
you. These balls were plainly made of earth ; handling 
one of them it was found to be much lighter than one of 
solid earth would be, hence must be hollow ; shaking it, 
something was both felt and heard to rattle, and, of 
course, there must be something within. “ What is it ?” 
comes up again. How shall we know what is inside ? 
“Open it”—you will say, and that is just what I did. 
But there are various ways of opening such a ball, and if 
we do not know what we are to find we must be careful 
to so open it as not to injure the contents; in this 
case the way would be to pick off one little piece of the 
shell after another until the thing within can be seen. 
WHAT WAS WITHIN THE MUD BALL, 
is shown in figure 2. And you will at once say, It is an 
insect of some kind, quietly coiled up, but as you cau 
learn, if you touch it, still alive. An insect in this state 
of rest, or dormant (meaning sleeping), is called a pupa 
or chrysalis, and thecase containing it is acoccoon. Before 
we try to learn what insect we have in hand, let ns see 
what we have been doing. You have no doubt read of 
noted naturalists, some who by studying plants have 
become eminent botanists, others by the study of rocks, 
are known as geologists; still others study insects, others 
give their time to birds, 
and so on, and such stu¬ 
dents sometimes become 
known the world over, 
each as an eminent nat¬ 
uralist, in his line. Now, 
all that th ; most learned 
of these won nas done, is 
just what we have been 
doing with our mud balls. 
The most eminent nat¬ 
uralist is only engaged in trying to make the plant, 
the bird, the rock, the insect answer our every day 
QUESTION, “WIIAT IS IT ?” 
and this he does by examining how it is made, outside 
and inside. You have no doubt heard of the great natur¬ 
alist Agassiz, who died a few years ago. I once heard 
some one express to him wonder at some of his dis¬ 
coveries. Agassiz said : “I look at ze thing, I put down 
what I see. You look at ze thing and see itze sam -, and 
zat is all.”—This side talk is to impress upon you the 
fact that there is nothing about either branch of Natural 
Science as it is called, to prevent any country boy or 
girl from studying it; the objects are everywhere around 
them, and they have only to examine them within 
The quiet insect is there, and we may go back and 
learn what it was before it came there, or go on to see what 
will become of it. As we have it in its earthen coccoon, 
it will be as well to follow it and see what it will do next 
“ Zip, zit, boom ”—are the sounds as you read at evening 
by the lamp, and you at once know—at least if you live 
in tlie country—that a May-bug, or June-bug, or a Dor- 
bug is in the room Some nervous people may be afraid 
of it, but you know it to be perfectly harmless, as far as 
any harm it can do to you goes, so you watch where it 
falls, pick it up and put it out of the window—but as 
you put it out it is well to give it such a squeeze between 
the thumb and finger that it will never fly or move again. 
Some may not know this “ bug,” as it is called, but 
beetle as it properly is, so I give its portrait in figure 3, 
as the perfect state of what is shown in the imperfect 
state in figure 2. A few of these beetles come into the 
house, attracted by the light, but if in seasons when they 
are abundant, you were to take a lamp out into the 
orchard, or where there are other trees, yon would be 
astonished at the numbers that 
would come about, and sometimes 
they are found at work in the trees 
in such numbers that they may be 
shaken down and caught by the 
pailful. All beetles are not trouble¬ 
some in their perfect, or winged 
state, but this one feeds upon leaves, 
and sometimes does much damage 
by stripping the treesof their foliage. 
This is one reason why I advised 
you to give the one caught indoors 
a sharp pinch—to prevent it from doiftg any more mis¬ 
chief itself, but especially prevent the harm its progeny 
might do, as each female beetle will in time enter the 
ground and there 
LAT 40 OR 50 EGGS, 
which soon hatch and produce small, white grubs—or 
“worms” as they are commonly called—but the proper 
name for these and all other insects in this state is larva. 
These lance (plural of larva) go on feeding for some 
three years upon what they find in the earth. At the 
proper time, they form the mud balls with which I began 
their story, and at length come out as beetles. Before I 
say anything about the ways of the grub or larva, I want 
to call your attention especially 
to these changes, as they are 
what happen, in one way or 
another, to all insects. I have 
here given in brief the different 
changes of the June-bug, and as 
I find that many grown persons 
do not know that insects take on 
these different forms, and the 
order in which they follow one 
another, I wish to impress 
upon you “ the order of their going.” We have first the 
egg, second the larva, which may be known as grub, mag¬ 
got, caterpillar, and oftener under the general term of 
“ worm.” This, in making its growth, changes its skin 
several times, and at last becomes a pupa, in which 
state it is usually quiet for awhile, and looks quite 
unlike the larva from which it was formed. In some 
cases the pupa is formed underground, but in many 
others it is covered in a coccoon of silk, and at¬ 
tached to trees, etc. Sooner or later, the pupa bursts its 
covering, and the perfect insect or imago appears. In 
this case a beetle, in others a butterfly or moth, or it is a 
two-winged or a four-winged fly, or some oilier insect. 
I can not now speak of the different kinds of insects, 
but merely say that in all we find these different states, 
and these changes more or less complete. 
REMEMBER THAT, EGG, LARVA, PUPA, AND IMAGO, 
or perfect insect, is the order of these wona r, il changes. 
Now we come back to the larva of our Juno lug ; small 
at first, it feeds upon the minute roots ot grasses, and is 
not noticed, but in time it gets large enough to be known 
as the White Grub, and (fig. 4) is as large as your littie 
finger. In this state it is one of the farmers’ worst ene¬ 
mies, as it eats the roots of nearly every plant it meets. 
I have known it to take the roots of young fruit trees as 
large as your little finger, cutting them square across ; it 
will make great holes in the potatoes; it will get into 
the Strawberry patch, and plant after plant in a row wilt 
die, its roots all cut off, before the grower finds out the 
trouble. I can not tell you all the mischief it does, but 
perhaps its worst work is in grass lands, quite ruining 
the finest pastures. One of my friends n§ar Boston has 
a place noted for its many acres of beautiful lawn. A 
few years ago, lie saw his fine green turf turn to brown, 
and found his grass had no roots, but he could roll up 
the sod as if it were a carpet. He had to sow his lawn 
anew, and I happened there at the time when he had a 
dozen or more men who picked up these grubs by the 
3.—THE BEETLE. 
Other insects prey upon it, and crows, often accused of 
doing mischief when really doing a good work, take 
many, as do skunks, and it is said that hogs will root for 
and kill them. But the enemy that is likely to be of the 
greatest help in keeping the grub in check, is not an an¬ 
imal, but a plant 1 Several years ago we had sent ns 
some white grubs, each bearing one or two enormous- 
horns, as shown in fig. 5. An examination showed these 
to be plants which were growing upon the grub, in fact 
planted in and feeding upon them just as other plants 
grow in and feed upon the soil. This plant sometimes 
attacks the grubs in vast numbers, so that nearly every 
insect is thus ornamented. The plant is a kind oi fun¬ 
gus, the family of plants to which the toadstools as well 
as the mildews, rusts, and blights belong. This gives 
you a glimpse of one of the wonderful relations between 
animal life and plant life. Experiments are being made 
with the hope that this fungus may be made useful in de¬ 
stroying the white grub. Instances in which insects live 
upon and injure plants are common enough, but for a 
plant to live upon and destroy an insect—ror a white 
grub that has these plants attached to it must soon die_ 
is quite unusual. The Doctor. 
A Picture Puzzle.— The scene which is here- 
given is one made up of rocks, trees, and the sea. There 
is nothing particularly strange in the way in which the 
rocks are arranged to make the cliff, and why shouldn’t 
tlie trees grow just, as they are represented ? The picture 
is then, as far as the trees, rocks, and sea, are concerned, 
a natural one. But do you see anything more titan has 
been mentioned ? This matter must be left to each one 
to find out. When once seen—and it is liable to be seea 
at once—it is always there as plain as a nose on a man’s, 
or anybody else’s face whenever one looks at the picture. 
Ottur 8®e8zzB<;-B5«x. 
CROSS-WORD. 
My first is in schooner but not in brig, 
My next is in whisker but not in wig, 
My third is in elbow but not in knee, 
My fourth is in meadow but not in lea, 
My fifth is in baton but not in stick, 
My sixth is in mortar but not in brick, 
My seventh is in always but not in now, 
My eighth is in forehead but not in brow, 
My ninth is in album but not. in book, 
My tenth is in scullion but not in cook; 
The answer you’ll find if you properly seek, 
It is something that happens just once a week. 
C. F. W. 
ANAGRAMS. 
1. Rail 0 big chap ! 
2. Licks a berry. 
3. Mad in sod. 
4. A. C. anchored. 
5. Such of Dave. 
6. A mere tune. 
7. I merit, a slip. 
8. Be tanning. 
it. Unkind grate. 
10. Ann wears blue. 
