Contents

We hope that the children who read this book will like the boys and girls who are in it. They are real, and the good times they have are real, as any boy or girl who has lived out-of-doors will know. And the stories are true. Peter is not always good. But do you expect a child always to be good? We do not. Sometimes, too, the frolics turn into a scramble to catch a dragon-fly that will not be caught, and there are accidents. Also, Betty and Jack work hard to win a prize which the guide gives to the child who learns most about ants.

Of course it would be impossible for five children to go in search of locusts, grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, dragon-flies, May-flies, leaf-hoppers, lace-wings, caddis-worms, butterflies, beetles, bees, wasps—and so many other six-legged creatures that among them they have wings and legs enough to fill a new Pandora's box—without having a good deal happen. And a good deal does happen. It is all true enough, and every word about the six-legged busybodies is true as true. The other books, too, that come after this in our Story-Told Science Series will be every word true.

And we who wrote this book? Well, we, too, have been children. We used to climb trees and turn somersaults; why—But that is another story! And we remember so well what it used to be like to have to learn dull things we did not wish to know. So we said to ourselves, as we looked over our spectacles at each other, "No, they sha'n't be told a single uninteresting fact; they sha'n't be dull, poor dears, as we were so long ago, before we put on spectacles and began to call ourselves wise."

And so, although we sat down and wrote a book just about long enough for a school-year's work; although we felt very proud because our stories had more wonderful six-legged creatures than any book written for children; although we took pains to have in the book only such little creatures as any one of us could see any day; although we hoped that mothers and teachers would say, "At last, this is a book the children and I can like and find useful!" or, "There, that will help as a starting-point to tell about the bees and the flowers!" or, "This story about the flies will teach the children what it means to be clean!" Although, I say, we hoped all these things, yet our chief hope was that we might give all sorts of children a good time.

So we put our spectacles on and looked very wise, and took a quantity of ink on our pens and began to write. And we wrote and wrote and wrote. And part of the time, while one of us was writing and hoping the stories would be so interesting the children would want to write about them, too, the other was drawing and labelling each sketch so plainly that any child could understand it, even if the ears were quite where they could not be expected to be, or there were more eyes than, seemingly, one creature ought to have, or wings and legs served to make music, as no sensible child could possibly guess.

And now we can't do better than wish you a good time before we say good-bye. We wish you to enjoy all the frolics, to feel how jolly it is to be out-of-doors in the woods and fields and lakes, climbing, canoeing, picnicing, and swimming.

But still more, we hope that you will realize that more wonderful than the most wonderful fairy story ever told is the marvel of the created life of these little insects; we want you to come to know something of their joys and troubles; we want you to learn how to be kind to them, and how they may be useful to you; and we want you to find out for yourselves the places they take in the great plan of creation.

In other words, we want you to think and feel about the lives of these six-legged busybodies, and see for yourselves how much even a butterfly can add to the interest and beauty of living. Does this seem a little bit like a sermon? Well, you see, we forgot we had kept on our spectacles so long, and somehow spectacles always turn into sermons. Perhaps it is because both begin with the letter S.

And now this is all of our short word to the wise. We expect to make each one of our books better than the last, and you can help us to do this by writing any suggestions you may have. We shall be glad to hear from children, big or little.

J. M. and J. M.

South Hadley, Massachusetts,
January 27, 1909.

LITTLE BUSYBODIES

"Luncheon so soon!"

"I'm as hungry as a bear," declared Jimmie.

"And hear Kitty mewing; she's hungry, too." Betty looked at the big round basket, whose cover kept restlessly stirring.

"Did you leave something in the baggage-car for Max to eat?" Mrs. Reece asked Jimmie.

"Yes, mum. It's one o'clock; can't we have something now?"

"As late as that! No wonder you chickens are hungry for—"

"Chicken!" squealed Betty.

"And ham sandwiches!" added Jimmie.

"And chocolate cake!"

"And root-beer!"

"And peppermints!"

"Ssh!" said Mrs. Reece, "or every one in the car will know what little piggies you are. Ask Lizzie for the basket."

Every minute the air was growing cooler. The children could smell the pine woods, and once in a while the train flashed by a great big sawmill, or a lake set like a sapphire in the deep green of the forests. And the hills were rolling nearer and nearer in great shadows. The children ate their luncheon contentedly, looking out of the windows and thinking of the mountains there would be to climb, the ponds, the streams to fish, the pictures to take, 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 owners of the fruit farms get rid of the scale."

"Did they carry them all the way out, mother?"

"Yes," answered Jimmie; "they got a Pullman car for them, and Mr. and Mrs. Ladybug and family travelled in style."

"Mother, tell Jim to be still." Betty, not unlike other little sisters, hated to be teased by her brother.

"And now, let me see," said Mrs. Reece. "I don't know that I can tell you any more until I know more myself. Yes, I do know what baby beetles are called. They are called grubs, and they live in the ground until it is time for them to turn into grown-up beetles. While they are babies they eat as much and as fast as they can, as no baby but a beetle should. The more they eat the sooner they come out into the bright world as a June-bug or some other kind of beetle. They eat all the tender little roots they can find. This is very nice—"

"For Mary Ann, but rather hard on Abraham."

"You horrid boy," said Betty, "you don't even let me hear a story in peace! It's very nice what, mother?"

"It's very nice for the little grubs, but it's rather hard on the plants, for if too many roots are nibbled away the plants die. The caterpillars are great eaters, too."

Betty leaned over and whispered something to her mother; then they both giggled.

"I know what you're saying," said Jimmie, but after that he was quieter.

"Sometimes a caterpillar will thrive on just one kind of a plant; it may be carrot, it may be milkweed. On that it feeds until it has grown as large as possible. Then it spins itself a nice silken cocoon, or rolls itself up in a soft leaf and takes a long, long nap. And now it is time for us to take a nap, too, for we shall soon reach Bemis, and then there will be still two long lakes to cross and a carry to walk."

There was great excitement about Turtle Lodge. Lizzie kept flying out with rugs, and then forgetting they hadn't been brushed and flying in again. The cat was playing croquet with the balls and spools of an open work-basket, and Max had discovered an old straw hat which tasted very good to him. Only Mrs. Reece kept her head and stayed indoors, moving about quietly from room to room, putting the house in that beautiful order which little children never think about.

Out on the grass that sloped down to the street, which, in its turn, tumbled head over heels down to the lake, Betty and Jimmie were playing with their playmates. They were all so wild with joy that every time Jimmie saw another boy he shouted, "Come over!" when the boy was coming, anyway, just as fast as he could.

Up, up from the foot of the lake climbed an old man; up, up, up the steep street he came, his white hair shaking and shining in the brisk June breeze, his long, white beard caught every once in a while by the wind and tossed sideways.

"Mother," called Jimmie, "Ben Gile is coming!"

Out came Mrs. Reece to greet the old man.

Then, one by one, the children spoke with Ben Gile.

"You're having a good time before you can say Jack Robinson, aren't you?"

"Yes, sir," came in a chorus of voices. Then, "Tell us a story; tell us a story!"

"Not to-day," said the old man. "Why, you want a story before you've had time to turn around."

Betty stuck her head out from behind her mother. "Mother said you would tell us about crickets and moths, and everything."

"Well, well, well," murmured the old man, "did she? But I can't tell a story to-day. I'll tell you, though, something, so that when you come to collect the little creatures you'll know what to do. All sit down."

They all sat down cross-legged on the ground, the old man in the middle.

"Here, you big Jim-boy, catch me that butterfly."

There was a wild rush, and the bright wings were soon caught.

"There, you've torn off one of its legs," said the old man.

Jimmie looked troubled. "I didn't mean to, sir."

"Do you know how it hurts to have your leg torn off, boy? Do you know, children?"

"No," came in a chorus.

The guide took out a piece of paper and drew a picture on it. "There, every part of that little fellow's body I've drawn has muscles, such fine muscles no naked eye could ever see them. I'll show them to you under the microscope in my cabin. Those muscles move the body, and each muscle is controlled by threads, still more fine, called nerves."

The old man reached out like a flash and pinched Jimmie.

"Ouch!" cried the boy, and there was a shout of laughter from the children.

"You felt that?"

"I guess I did," said Jim, sulkily.

"Well, that's because you're made something the same way this butterfly is. When anything hurts us it's because some of our nerves are hurt, and quick as a flash the news travels to the brain, and we try to get away from the thing that causes pain—a pinch, perhaps, or, still worse, the hurt of a poor leg that has been torn off."

"But a butterfly hasn't any brain," objected Jimmie, who was still cross.

"Hasn't it? Well, we'll see. Now, you watch my pencil." He pointed to the head of the butterfly. "This little fellow has a very tiny brain there. Also running through the body, from end to end, is a little tube through which the food passes. It is in the head above this tube where the tiny brain is, and from which two little threads run down around the tube and join to form another little knot of nerve cells like that of the brain. Then, from this second one there runs a series of little knots united by fine threads the entire length of the body, one in each ring of the body. Do you understand that?"

"Yes," piped up Betty, "mother told us an insect is made up of rings, and—and—" she stammered, surprised at her own boldness, "the word means cut up into parts."

"Good! Why, that's a real bright girl. Well, from each one of these knots nerves go to the muscles of the body."

"It's just like a lot of beads on a string," said Hope Stanton.

"So it is, child. So, you see, if we handle an insect roughly, squeezing it too hard, or breaking a leg or a wing, a message is sent to one of these little beads or knots or nerve cells, and the poor, helpless creature suffers pain."

"But I didn't mean to hurt that butterfly!"

"No, of course you didn't. The only way to do," said the old man, "is to catch them in a net. Make it of bobinet with a rounded bottom, sewing it to a wire ring and fastening it to a handle that is the right weight and length for your arm."

"But then, after you caught it, how could you keep it, sir?" asked Betty.

"There are two merciful ways," said the old man, "of killing insects, but neither way is safe for children to try. Put a few drops of chloroform on a piece of cotton under a tumbler turned upside down. Put the insect inside. It will soon fall asleep without pain. The other is a cyanide bottle. I have one down at the cabin. It must be kept tightly corked and never smelled. The cyanide in the bottle is hard and dry. Several insects may be put into the bottle at the same time. Once there they die very quickly. After large insects are killed the wings should be folded over the back, and they should be placed in a little case like this. See, I'm folding a piece of paper to form a three-cornered case. Then I bend down one edge to keep the little case closed."

At this moment out flew Lizzie with a curtain which she was going to shake.

"Here, here!" shouted the old man, "don't shake that; catch that caterpillar on it. I want it."

Lizzie made a good-natured grab at the caterpillar, and then there was a cry of pain. "Oh, begorra, begorra, I'm stung by a wasp, I am! Ow!" But she still kept tight hold of the caterpillar as she danced about.

"No," said the guide, "you're not stung by any wasp. Bring me that! There, open your hand. You see, the caterpillar stung you."

"Oh my, what a beauty!" exclaimed the children. "But caterpillars don't sting."

"Oh yes, they do," continued Ben Gile, with a twinkle in his eye; "ask Lizzie." Lizzie was looking at the palm of her hand, which showed how badly it had been stung.

"Now, you see, we'll need something to pick up these little creatures with—a pair of forceps or something of that kind. At least, you must be very careful."

"And what else do we need?" asked the children.

"A little hand lens will magnify the small parts of an insect a great deal. It will show you all the tiny hairs on the body, and the little rings and the feelers and the facets of the eyes, and many another wonderful thing."

"What are we going to put the bugs in?" inquired Jimmie.

"Lizzie will get you a small wooden box," said Mrs. Reece.

Lizzie went off grumbling something about guides and bites and insects, but soon she came back with a nice box, and in a minute all the children's heads were clustered about Ben Gile as he showed them how to line the box with a layer of cork, how to steam the insects a little if they were dry, and then how to put the long, slender pins through the chest of the insect and stick it into the cork.

"It was locusts, child—yes, you're right," answered the old man. "Locusts it was; but you eat wild honey."

Betty came out from behind the tree and whispered, "You eat them both?"

"So men did in the Bible," said Ben Gile, and washing his sugar-pails, and putting his maple sugar camp—a very sweet place for a little girl to be when there are still piles of maple sugar packed away on the shelves—in order for the summer.

In all her short life Betty had never known another old man like him. In the winter he taught school; in spring he made maple sugar; in summer he was guiding about the ponds or looking up into the trees most of the time; and in the fall he cut wood before he went back to teaching; but what was oddest of all to Betty was that he knew the squirrels and deer and rabbits as well as he seemed to know little girls or little boys. There was a story told in those woods about his taming even a trout so that one morning it hopped out of the water and followed him everywhere he went—hop, hop, flop behind him. And in the evening, as Ben Gile and his tame trout were passing by the pond again, the trout fell in and was drowned. But, dear me, that is a fish story, and you mustn't believe any fish stories whatever except those your father tells! Still, if your grandpa is fond of fishing, you may believe his fish stories, too.

Betty came out farther from behind the tree. "Please, sir, do you eat grasshoppers?"

"Not yet, my dear." The old man's eyes twinkled. "I knew a little boy once"—Betty was wondering whether this old man had ever been a little boy himself—"I knew a little boy once who wasn't afraid to swallow even a caterpillar, but I think that little boy never thought of eating a grasshopper." The old man shook his head gravely. "No, not a grasshopper."

"Please, sir," said Betty, coming right up to the bucket he was washing in the brook—"please, sir, do you know any stories about grasshoppers?"

Ben Gile laid his finger along his nose and thought. Betty was sure he knew a hundred million stories, and that he could tell her something about anything she might ask for in all the world.

"Well, once upon a time," the old man began, "there was another old man who was a great deal wiser than I am, and a great deal richer, my dear, for he owned a whole kingdom and lived in a palace, and his name was—"

"Solomon!" called out Betty, dancing up and down, out of pride in her own wisdom.

"Right! And this other old man said:

"But that's not a story."

The guide shook his head. "You don't know a story, child, when you hear one. It began, 'Once upon a time,' didn't it?"

"Yes, sir; but please tell me another."

"Well, there are others in the Bible, my dear, about locusts and grasshoppers."

"But, please, sir," said Betty, who was almost ready to cry, she was so teased—"please tell me one of your own stories."

Ben Gile began to swash his bucket up and down, up and down, in the stream until the water fairly rocked. Then he pulled the bucket out of the water, set it beside him, and reached out after a locust.

"Here he is." There was a long pause. Betty thought he would never go on. "Well, once upon a time there was a little army and all its uniforms were brown and green, and from the meanest soldier in the ranks to the lieutenant-commander this little army was made up of insects who belonged to the same tribe. Let me see—there were the grasshoppers and the locusts and the katydids and the crickets."

"Please, sir, were they cousins?"

"I think they were, my dear. Yes, first cousins, and, unlike even my first cousins, they all have wings, and straight wings like this."

The guide gently spread out one of the wings.

"Just where the back of your chest is these wings grow—two pairs of wings, my dear, and two pairs of wings mean a good deal more than two pairs of new shoes. This first pair is straight and narrow and hard, because it is meant to cover the gauzy wings underneath. Puff!"

Away flew the locust.

"You see, he doesn't use his first pair, but holds them out straight from his body while he spreads out the gauzy ones like a—like a—"

"Fan!" shouted Betty, quite forgetting the tiny squirrel who had come up near her, and, at her shout, nearly jumped out of his little red jacket.

"A yellow fan," said the old man. "And some have a red fan. Well, I think," said he, reaching for his pail, "there isn't going to be any more of this story."

"Not any more? But there must be more, sir; I've seen hundreds and hundreds of them on a dusty road, and, please, they're just the color of the dirt."

The guide shook his head. "Not to-day."

By this time Betty was so eager to have him go on that she had forgotten all about being afraid of him. "And when they whir up from the road, sir, they say, 'Clack! clack! clack!'"

The old man made a sound like the noise of a locust.

"How does it make its mouth move, sir?"

"It doesn't make its mouth move, child. It makes the noise by striking the edges of the gauzy wings and hard wing covers together. See, this way!" And the old man struck his arm and leg together. "It has another fiddle, too, which it uses when it makes the long, rasping, drowsy sound of summer days. Then it rubs the rough edges of its hind leg against the edge of its wing-cover."

"Please, is it happy, then?" asked Betty.

"Just as happy as a healthy locust, who lives in long, sweet-smelling grass and is contented with his own singing, can be, and that is very happy."

"Oh!" said Betty, "it doesn't use its mouth, then? Jimmie said it did."

"Jimmie's a stupid boy. See this fellow." The old man held the locust toward Betty. "With its upper lip, broad, you see; and there is the lower lip made in two scallops, and there's a short feeler on either side, and another pair of soft jaws with a feeler. Hidden away under those parts is a pair of dark-brown, horny jaws which open like two big swinging gates."

"What makes them so big?"

"The better to eat you with, my dear." The guide worked his jaws until Betty, half afraid and half pleased, screamed and ran behind a tree. "Oh, how they can eat!" growled the old man, "more than any little girl or boy I ever knew! Years and years ago, when your mamma was a baby, they mounted up into the air from the Rocky Mountains and flew eastward in a great cloud. Down they swooped upon the fertile valleys in rustling hordes, and ate everything in sight—grass, grains, vegetables, and bushes. They ate and ate and ate until they had eaten up fifty million dollars' worth of food, and the poor farmer could hear nothing but the sound of the chewing of those ever-swinging jaws. Now, be off, little girl, or my pails won't be clean."

"Oh, please, sir, just tell me how they jump and breathe."

"Dear, dear, see this fellow!" He had wet a little grain of maple sugar, and a tiny meadow grasshopper which had alighted on his knee was pushing the sweet stuff into its mouth with both fore legs. "Child, you must never," said the old man, savagely, "push your food in that way."

"Please, sir," answered Betty, "I never do, because I eat with my fork and my knife. Please, sir, are they happy when they jump?"

"Looks like a horse, doesn't it?" asked the old man. "It's made for jumping. Think of all the training it takes to make a jumper of your brother at school. Well, this chap can jump ten times as far. It's born with a better jump than the longest-legged boy you ever saw. But the locust might get its head cut off when jumping if it weren't for this little saddle that covers the soft part of the neck. Mr. Locust can't always look before he leaps, as a little girl can, and the knife edge of a blade of grass would cut its head right off if it weren't for this saddle. See, here are its long leaping-legs, and on the back edge of these are some spines to keep it from slipping, and the feet are padded with several soft little cushions that keep it from chin-chopping itself to pieces when it lands after a long jump. And here, my dear, are little rest-legs just behind the front legs. With these Mr. Locust hangs on to a blade of grass when tired—a fine idea, child; every little boy and girl ought to have some rest-legs like the locust. And the locust has some extra eyes, too."

Ben Gile was going so fast now that Betty was listening to him, mouth open, as he pointed with a blade of grass to one thing after another.

"You see, the locust has two big eyes, and there in the middle of the forehead it has three little eyes, and with five eyes there isn't much it can't see. And here on the body are two tiny shining oval windows. These are ear-laps, and that, my dear, is the way it hears. And upon the sides of the body (the thorax—that is, just the chest) and his abdomen are tiny holes. The air enters through these, and that is the way Mr. Locust breathes."

"Oh," said Betty, "then it hasn't got any nose? I thought everything in the world had a nose."

"And this little body," the old man went on, "is as strong as a grub hoe. With it the locust makes holes in fence rails, logs, stumps, and the earth, and in those holes mother locust lays her eggs. See, those four spines are for boring holes. With these Mrs. Locust bores a hole in the ground, and then with these same spines she guides the bundles of eggs into the hole and covers them up with a gummy stuff. There the eggs stay until next spring, when, my dear, out comes a little hopper with no wings, and this little hopper is called a nymph. It grows and splits its skin, grows and splits its skin, and with its new skin—it has five or six skins, and leaves all its old clothes hanging around on the bushes—its wings grow bigger and bigger. At last it flies off just as its mother and father did a year ago."

Ben Gile tossed the locust into the air and called out, "Shoo!" clapping his hands loudly together. Out from the woods came two baby deer, a wise, gentle old cow; from the cabin came a mother cat and three kittens and a big black dog; and from the trees scampered down a half a dozen squirrels.

"Time for dinner."

Betty went up to him and whispered something in his ear. The old man nodded his head solemnly, and the little girl went trotting along the path to Rangeley Village.