Little Busybodies | Page 3

and the stories they were to hear the summer long.
"Mother," said Betty, eating her second piece of chocolate
cake--"mother, what will Ben Gile tell us this summer?"
"Let me see," said her mother, "perhaps it will be about the little
creatures--grasshoppers and katydids, butterflies and bees."
"Goody!"

"Pooh!" said Jimmie, "I don't see what you want to know of those old
things. I'd much rather hear about porcupines. There isn't anything to
say about a grasshopper except that it hops."
"Isn't there, my son? Well, that shows that you don't use your eyes.
Suppose some one said there was nothing to say about you except that
you whistle?"
"Well, what is there about an old grasshopper, anyhow?"
"I don't know, but Ben will."
"But tell us something, mum," urged Jimmie, who loved his mother
dearly, and was certain she knew more than anybody else, in part
because she had been to college, but chiefly because she was his
mother.
"Let me see," said Mrs. Reece, "I shall have to think about it." Both of
the children came as close to her as they could, while she continued:
"What a strange world it would be if there were no insects in it! We
should have no little crickets chirping in the sunny fields or in the dark
corners and cracks of our houses. There would be no katydids singing
all night, no clacking of the locusts in the tall grass along dusty roads,
no drowsy hum of bees. There would be no little ants and big ants
digging out underground tunnels and carrying the grains of sand as far
from their doorways as possible. There would be no brightly colored
moths and butterflies flitting from flower to flower. We should find no
sparkling fairy webs spun anew for us every morning."
"But, mother, all these creatures aren't insects," said Jimmie.
"Yes, they are, dear. It is hard to believe that they all belong to the
same family called insecta, but they do."
"Mother, what's that word mean?"
"It doesn't mean anything more than cut up into parts. You see, Betty,

all these insect bodies are made up of separate rings joined nicely
together. If you look carefully you will find that behind the head there
is another distinct part. This is called the thorax, which means chest.
Behind that there is a pointed part of the body, which is called the
abdomen. Then, if you look again, you will see that all these little
creatures are alike in that they have six jointed legs."
"And are they all good, like the bee and the butterfly?" asked Betty,
who wasn't always a good little girl herself, and who thought it would
be much nicer if insects were naughty sometimes.
"Not all, dear," answered Mrs. Reece; "some do us real service, but
others are troublesome; insects are such hungry little fellows, and they
don't have chocolate cake every day to keep them from getting hungry.
They are hungry when they are babies and hungry when they grow up.
Some eat all they can see--like a little boy I know--and some prefer the
tender leaves and twigs. Some care only for the sweet sap flowing into
the new leaves and buds. And still others like best the tender new roots
of plants."
"Mother, what are the baddest ones?" asked Betty.
"Pooh! I know," said Jimmie; "the beetles are, because they eat
everything. Why, they'd eat the buttons off your coat or the nose off
your face or--"
"Jim! Jim! do tell the truth! The beetles, and bugs, too, are the most
troublesome. Many of the bugs are such tiny little creatures that it is
hard to realize that they can hurt a plant. But bugs have sucking beaks.
With these beaks they bore into the leaves or the buds of the plant, and
then by means of tiny muscles at the back of the mouth they pump up
the sap. To be sure, one little pump could do no harm; but think of
millions of little sucking beaks, millions of little pumps busy at work
on a single plant! Do you remember the pansies mother had in the
winter, and how they were all covered by green plant-lice? Well, those
are bugs called aphids. You remember they were pale green, just the
color of the plant, and so transparent and soft they looked most
harmless. The scale insects are very troublesome, too, but mother

doesn't know anything about them."
"Oh, I know what they are," announced Jimmie, "they get into the fruit
trees."
"And sometimes onto shrubs, too. Mother has heard of a scale insect
out in California which has been a great nuisance to fruit-growers. A
certain ladybug finds this cottony-cushion scale a tender morsel, so
many ladybugs were taken out there to help the