ee a little bubble at the tip of every tail. This little
bubble is held there by tiny hairs, and because whirligig has it, it can
breathe while it stays under the water. From time to time it comes to
the surface to get a new bubble, then is off again for another race or
game of tag with its friends, and at the same time to snap up a few
water creatures for dinner. It looks as though it had four eyes, but it
has not, just two, divided into upper and lower halves. The upper halves
look up through the water and the lower ones down at the bottom of the
brooks. So, you see, insects must step lively if they want to keep out
of its clutches.

"The babies of some beetles, instead of liking nice, clean food, prefer
dead animals. The mother and father hunt around until they find a dead
mouse or bird; then they begin to dig away the earth under the mouse or
bird and around it. Finally the poor dead thing is in a deep hole; then
Mrs. Burying-beetle lays her eggs on it, and together they cover it up
with earth. When the grubs hatch they find plenty to eat, and are soon
big burying-beetles, like their mothers and fathers.

"Did you ever wonder how the little fat worms get inside of chestnuts
and acorns? A beetle called a weevil is the creature which puts the fat
worms there. Mrs. Weevil has a long, slender, curved beak. She crawls up
on to the side of a chestnut, bores a hole in the side, then lays an egg
deep down in it. After a while the egg hatches and a tiny grub begins to
feed on the nut. Fatter and fatter it gets; sometimes it lies in the nut
all winter, but more often it crawls out and buries itself in the ground
while it grows into a weevil.

"Some day, as you are walking along a sunny road in the country, you may
meet a blister-beetle. It is a pretty, bluish-green color, and when you
pick it up you will see drops of oil oozing out of its joints. The dried
bodies will raise a blister on the skin, and that is the reason we call
such beetles blister-beetles. There is a queer blister-beetle who lays
her eggs near bees' nests. The baby beetles then wait for a bee to come
along. They fasten themselves to the hairs on the bee's body. When the
bee goes to its nest to put in the honey the young beetle manages to
get into a honey-cell with the egg. Mrs. Bee does not see that anything
is amiss, seals up the cell, and flies away for another load. The larva
first eats the egg of Mrs. Bee, then it changes into a clumsy kind of a
fellow,