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72 an undecided point whether the toes do not grow new centipedes; at any rate the centipede grows new toes. Ridiculous round beetles tumble on their backs and scramble and slide about the dinner-table till they get a purchase on the cruet-stand, up which they climb in a deliberate and solemn manner, and having reached the top, go forthwith headlong into the mustard. Sometimes they get out again unperceived, but an irregular track of mustard on the cloth, with a drop wherever the beetle stopped to take breath, leads to the discovery of the wanderer sitting among the salad and pretending to be a caper. Then again there are oval beetles, which never tumble on their backs, but dart about so quickly that you are uncertain whether something did or did not go into the soup, until you find them at the bottom. Many other insects come to the festive board, unbidden guests; grasshoppers, with great muscular powers, but a deplorable lack of direction; minute money-spiders that drop from your eyebrows by a thread which they make fast to your nose; flimsy-winged flies that are always being singed, and forthwith proceed to spin round on their backs and hum in a high key; straw-colored crickets that sit and twiddle their long antennae at you as if they never intended moving again, and then suddenly launch themselves with a jerk into your claret; fat, comfortable-bodied moths, with thick, slippery wings, which bang phut-phut against the ceiling, until they succeed in dropping themselves down the chimney of the lamp. All these, however, are the ruck, the rabble, the tag-rag and bob-tail that follow the leader — the white ant. The white ant! What an enormous power this insect wields, and how merciless it is in the exercise of it! Here the houses may not have gardens,