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Updated: June 4, 2025
Chaffinches are like the children in village streets they will not get out of your way; by and by in rural places the merciful man will have to ring his bell almost incessantly to avoid running over them. As I do not travel at a furious speed I manage to avoid most things, even the wandering loveless oil-beetle and the small rose-beetle and that slow-moving insect tortoise the tumbledung.
The Scolia, which attacks a larva of the rose-beetle, stings it in one point only, but in this point the motor ganglia are concentrated, and those ganglia alone: the stinging of other ganglia might cause death and putrefaction, which it must avoid.
A very small beetle, the Trox, has the imprescriptible mission of purging the earth of the rabbits' fur rejected by the fox. Here structure explains the function. The intestine of the grub of the rose-beetle "is a veritable triturating mill, which transforms vegetable matter into mould; in a month it will digest a volume of matter equal to several thousand times the initial volume of the grub."
To paralyse without killing, "to deliver the prey to the larvae inert but living": that is the end to be attained; only the method varies according to the species of the hunter and the structure of the prey; thus the Cerceris, which attacks the coleoptera, and the Scolia, which preys upon the larvae of the rose-beetle, sting them only once and in a single place, because there is concentrated the mass of the motor ganglions.
The rose-beetle trod upon the water prettily, under a lively vibration, and he looked quite as happy, and considerably more active, than when he had been cradled in the anthers of the rose.
In went sulky Mr. Fuzz, and on trundled the ambulance till a golden green rose-beetle was discovered, lying on his back kicking as if in a fit. "Dear me, what shall I do for him?" thought Nelly. "He acts as baby did when she was so ill, and mamma put her in a warm bath. I haven't got my little tub here, or any hot water, and I'm afraid the beetle would not like it if I had.
Anyway, we are going to devote next summer to studying the parasites of the Rose-beetle, and try to find out what sort of creatures prey upon them. And I want to tell you something exciting, Duane. Promise you won't breathe one word!" "Not a word!"
No social demands interfered with a calm and dignified contemplation of the Rose-beetle, Melolontha subspinosa, and his scandalous "Life History"; there was no chatter of girls from hall and stairway to distract the loftier inspirations that possessed him, no intermittent soprano noises emitted by fluttering feminine fashion, no calflike barytones from masculine adolescence to drive him to the woods, where it was always rather difficult for him to focus his attention on printed pages.
He bowed, setting the buttercup a-rocking, and introduced himself: "Bobbie, of the family of rose-beetles." Maya had to laugh to herself. She knew very well he was not a rose-beetle; he was a dung-beetle. But she passed the matter over in silence, not caring to mortify him. "Don't you mind the rain?" she asked. "Oh, no. I'm accustomed to the rain from the roses, you know.
"I'll put him into a jolly big tub where you can grow all the water-weeds you like, Scott." Her brother, surprised and gratified, handed her the bath-towel in the depths of which reposed the batrachian. "He's really an interesting fellow, Sis," explained Scott; "he exudes a sticky, viscous fluid from his pores which is slightly toxic. I'm going to try it on a Rose-beetle."
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