Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 50.djvu/521

Rh open discloses a half dozen or more "horn" or "bess beetles"—great, shining, clumsy, black fellows with a curved horn on the head. They are often utilized as horses by country children, the horn furnishing an inviting projection to which may be fastened, by a thread or cord, chips and pieces of bark to be dragged about by the strong and never lagging beast of burden. When tired of "playing horse" they can make of the insect an instrument of music, for, when held by the body, it emits a creaking, hissing noise, produced by rubbing the abdomen up and down against the inside of the hard, horny wing covers. This beetle passes its entire life in cavities in the rotten wood on which it feeds, and when it wishes a larger or more commodious home it has only to eat the more.

The handsome and beneficial lady beetles winter beneath fallen leaves or between and beneath the root leaves of the mullein and the thistle. Our most common species, the thirteen-spotted lady beetle, is gregarious, collecting together by thousands on the approach of cold weather, and lying huddled up like sheep until a "breath of spring" gives them the signal to disperse. Snout beetles galore can be found beneath piles of weeds near streams and the borders of ponds or beneath chunks and logs in sandy places. All are injurious, and the farmer by burning their hibernating places in winter can cause their destruction in numbers. Rove beetles, ground beetles, and many others live deep down in the vegetable mold beneath old logs, where they are, no doubt, as secure from the breath of the ice king as if they had followed the swallow to the tropics.

Of the Diptera, or flies, but few forms winter in the perfect state, yet the myriads of house flies and their kin, which next summer will distract the busy housewife, are represented in winter by a few isolated individuals which creep forth occasionally from crevice or cranny and greet us with a friendly buzz.

In midwinter one may also often see in the air swarms of small, gnatlike insects. They belong to this order, and live beneath the bark of freshly fallen beech and other logs. On warm, sunny days they go forth in numbers for a sort of rhythmical courtship; their movements while in the air being peculiar in that they usually rise and fall in the same vertical line—flitting up and down in a dreamy, dancing sort of motion.

Among the dozen or more butterflies and moths which winter in the perfect state the most common and the most handsome is the "Camberwell Beauty" or "Mourning Cloak," a large butterfly whose wings are a rich purplish brown above, duller beneath, and broadly margined with a yellowish band. It is often found in winter beneath chunks which are raised a short distance above the ground or in the crevices of old snags and fence rails. It is