Page:Anna Chapin--Half a dozen boys.djvu/240

214 the bodily form which will help it most to live its little life, an explanation so clearly and  vividly given that even Fred felt no need of  the pictures to understand the mechanism of  their small bodies.

The collecting fever spread, and the boys were often seen skipping about the fields, or  plunging headlong over fences, net in hand, in  pursuit of some gaudy butterfly. Bessie tried faithfully to make the boys feel that the main  object was not the catching and killing the  insects; but that this was only to help them to  a fuller understanding of the nature and varieties of their prey. Their whole energy was directed in the line of insects, and boxes of  specimens so rapidly collected, that the prospect was that the whole Carter family would  soon have to move out of the house, to make  room for the army of moths and beetles,  cocoons and butterflies, that speedily accumulated. Even long-suffering Mrs. Carter protested when, one day, on the piazza, she chanced to knock down a box containing a huge green  worm that Rob had carefully provided with  food and air-holes, and shut up, in the hope that