Their wings with green And purple .
—Anna L. Barbauld.
Something exciting was going on. Ruth could not tell just what it was at first. She could only watch and wonder. Then her eyes grew large and bright. Surely some fairy’s wand had touched the old , for suddenly it seemed alive with —big beetles and little beetles; beetles in sober colourings, and beetles gleaming with all the of the rainbow. Ruth had never dreamed that there could be so many of them or that they were so beautiful.
 
The gorgeously coloured, tigers attracted her first, though she didn’t know their name.
 
“Oh,” she cried, “how lovely!”
 
“And how strange,” added a voice just above her head, “how very strange, their children should be so .”
 
“What’s that?” asked one of the tigers, a green fellow, with purple lights, and two pale yellow dots on the edge of each wing cover. “Our children not so beautiful as we are, did you say? Of course, they are not; a fat grub couldn’t be, you know. But let me tell you, there are few things as smart as a tiger baby. I say,” he added, looking full at Ruth, “have you ever seen the hole he digs? It is often a foot deep, while he is less than an inch long. He has only his and legs to work with too. Yet he piles the earth on his flat head as if it were the easiest thing in the world, and then, climbing to the top, he throws it off, and is ready for another load.”
 
120“I suppose he digs a hole to catch things,” said Ruth, “like the ant lion, and does he stay at the bottom and——”
 
“No, he doesn’t stay at the bottom. He watches near the top of his hole for his dinner, hanging on by a pair of hooks which grow out of a hump on his back. He always goes to the bottom to eat his dinner, though; he seems to like privacy. Yes, we are a fierce family from the beginning, for we grown tigers can catch our either running or flying, and we usually manage to get it, too. But, then, farmers need not complain of us, for we never eat plants, and that is more than can be said of many here.”
 
“Such taste,” said a cloaked, horn, holding herself in a position that showed off her changeable blue and green dress, and her short yellow .
 
But the tiger did not answer. He was off after his dinner. Several tree borers, however, nodded their heads in agreement.
 
“I believe in a vegetable diet myself,” 121said Mrs. Sawyer, who wore as usual her dress of brown and gray. “It is just such people as the tigers who make things like that necessary in a respectable meeting,” and as she she waved her very long antennæ toward a big sign which read:
 
“THE AUDIENCE ARE REQUESTED NOT TO EAT EACH OTHER DURING THE MEETING”
“I am glad to say I am not one of that kind. I wonder if any one of you know why the members of our family are called sawyers. Perhaps I had better tell you: It is because our children saw into the trunks of trees, and sometimes they make holes large enough to kill the trees. Smart, isn’t it, for a baby?”
 
“But it doesn’t seem to be very nice,” began Ruth. Then she stopped, for Mrs. Sawyer was looking at her and the borers were nodding their heads again.
 
“Our children do not saw,” said the borers, “but they do bore, and it is pretty much the same thing for the tree.”
 
“My friends,” broke in a very solemn voice.
 
Every beetle stopped talking, and Ruth jumped to her feet, then down on the grass again, waiting for what was coming.
 
The speaker, a large, clean-looking beetle, had just flown to a in the very middle of the meeting. He was black in colour, well sprinkled above and below with pale straw yellow in dots and points, but the queer thing about him was the two oval black spots, each with a narrow line of straw colour around it, on his thorax. They were like great eyes, and made him look very wise.
 
“He is the eyed-elater,” whispered Mrs. Sawyer to Ruth. “There he is speaking again.”
 
“My friends,” the big beetle was saying in tones as solemn, as before, “the important thing in any meeting is to keep to the main issue.”
 
“The main issue?” said the goldsmith beetle, a beautiful little creature with wing covers of golden yellow, and a body of metallic green covered with white, woolly fuzz. “What is the main issue?”
 
“Dinner,” replied the tiger beetle, returning to his old place. “If it isn’t breakfast or supper.”
 
“No, my friend,” said the eyed-elater, with a grave glance, “the main issue is——”
 
Then he stopped and his two real eyes and the two spots which looked like eyes on some small beetles which were leaping in the air, turning somersaults, and making quite a noise.
 
“Will you be still?” he said in his sternest voice.
 
“How foolish,” said Mrs. Sawyer, “to expect click beetles to be still!”
 
But Ruth was all curiosity.
 
“I’ve seen you before,” she said, going closer and one of the funny little fellows.
 
Suddenly it curled up its legs, dropped as if shot, then lay like one dead.
 
“Here, here!” called the elater. “No 124more of that! We know all about your tricks!”
 
“All right,” said the would-be dead one, and he gave a click, popped into the air several inches, and came down on his back.
 
“That won’t do at all,” he said, and, clicking and popping once more, he came down on his feet.
 
“There,” he added, “you need to have patience with click beetles. You ought to know that, friend elater, for you are one of us.”
 
“Well, I’m bigger, and not so foolish, and my children are not so harmful as yours. Think of being a parent of those dreadful wire worms! That is what you click beetles are, and you know the farmer hasn’t a worse enemy. Now we must get back to the main issue.”
 
“Back?” said Mrs. Sawyer. “Were we ever there to begin with? You can’t scare me,” she added, “no matter how hard you stare. You haven’t any more eyes than the 125rest of us. Those two spots are not real eyes, and you know it.”
 
“The main issue,” repeated the elater in a very loud voice, “is, What makes us beetles?”
 
“That’s something I’d like to know,” said a handsome little beetle in a striped coat. “I’m a beetle, if there ever was one, yet I have a world-wide reputation as a .”
 
“Pray don’t get excited, Mrs. Potato Bug. It isn’t your time to talk yet. We are on the main issue, and I will answer my own question.”
 
Ruth was glad some one would answer it, for at this rate it seemed they would never get anywhere.
 
“We are beetles for several reasons,” went on the elater. “In the first place, we belong to the order Coleoptera.”
 ............