at once I touched the one point
where his vitality had concentrated itself, and he stood revealed a man
and a brother.

--Come in,--said he,--come in, right after breakfast, and you shall see
the animal that has convulsed the entomological world with questions as
to his nature and origin.

--So I went into the Scarabee's parlor, lodging-room, study, laboratory,
and museum,--a--single apartment applied to these various uses, you
understand.

--I wish I had time to have you show me all your treasures,--I said,
--but I am afraid I shall hardly be able to do more than look at the
bee-parasite. But what a superb butterfly you have in that case!

--Oh, yes, yes, well enough,--came from South America with the beetle
there; look at him! These Lepidoptera are for children to play with,
pretty to look at, so some think. Give me the Coleoptera, and the kings
of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepidoptera and Neuroptera for little
folks; Coleopteras for men, sir!

--The particular beetle he showed me in the case with the magnificent
butterfly was an odious black wretch that one would say, Ugh! at, and
kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. But he
looked at it as a coin-collector would look at a Pescennius Niger, if
the coins of that Emperor are as scarce as they used to be when I was
collecting half-penny tokens and pine-tree shillings and battered bits
of Roman brass with the head of Gallienus or some such old fellow on
them.

--A beauty!--he exclaimed,--and the only specimen of the kind in
this country, to the best of my belief. A unique, sir, and there is a
pleasure in exclusive possession. Not another beetle like that short of
South America, sir.

--I was glad to hear that there were no more like it in this
neighborhood, the present supply of cockroaches answering every purpose,
so far as I am concerned, that such an animal as this would be likely to
serve.

--Here are my bee-parasites,--said the Scarabee, showing me a box full
of glass slides, each with a specimen ready mounted for the microscope.
I was most struck with one little beast flattened out like a turtle,
semi-transparent, six-legged, as I remember him, and every leg
terminated by a single claw hooked like a lion's and as formidable for
the size of the creature as that of the royal beast.

--Lives on a bumblebee, does he?--I said. That's the way I call it.
Bumblebee or bumblybee and huckleberry. Humblebee and whortleberry for
peo