144 LITTLE FOLKS 
be picked off, came to life in the gardener's hand, and frightened 
him so that he dropped it in horror. 
One little Beetle will stiffen out as if dead, his legs as stiff as 
iron wire. He thus escapes being eaten by a bird, who don't eat 
dead bugs. These bugs and spiders, who pretend to be dead, or 
"play 'possum," will keep up the play till the last breath. They 
may be torn to pieces, limb by limb, or burned by a slow fire, but 
not a sign or a quiver will they give. Poor little things ! they seem 
to know that it is their only hope of escape. 
One little creature, when frightened, rolls himself into a ball. 
He happens to make a very pretty ball, for he is black and shiny, 
and has white stripes. 
I read a story of a girl w r ho was once walking in a garden 
when she chanced to disturb a family of these bugs. Of course 
they all became balls at once. The girl noticed them, and suppos- 
ing they were beads of an unusually pretty kind, she gathered 
a handful of them, carried them home and proceeded to string 
them. Naturally the bugs objected to being strung, and turned 
into bugs again in her hands. Probably she screamed and dropped 
them all on the floor ; at any rate she never strung any live beads 
again. 
Some of these rolling up creatures look like little stones, and 
others like the black seeds of flowers. Caterpillars which roll up 
look like funny little hair balls, and it is almost impossible to take 
them up, they slip through the fingers so easily. 
The very oddest insects that I ever heard of, are those that 
are dressed in disguise all their lives. One who lives in the black 
dirt with patches of white sand in it, is himself black and white, 
just the color of his home, and can scarcely be seen in it. 
One of the specter family looks so much like a little stick that 
you would never believe him to be alive unless you saw him run. 
His picture is on the opposite page. 
He is long and thin, exactly like a twig, and his six legs are like 
smaller twigs. His head looks like a kind of bud in the end, and 
his tail — well, his tail looks so much like his head that I could never 
tell which was which. He is such an odd-looking object that one 
hates to touch him, and I saw a gentleman try to catch one with a 
pair of scissors. Instead of catching him, alas ! he cut him quite 
in two. Before we recovered from our horror, he ran away, the 
head end one way and the tail end the other way. I should, there- 
