Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 40035-h.htm or 40035-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40035/40035-h/40035-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40035/40035-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://archive.org/details/bookofmonsters00smfair BOOK OF MONSTERS by DAVID AND MARIAN FAIRCHILD Portraits and Biographies of a Few of the Inhabitants of Woodland and Meadow Washington National Geographic Society 1914 Copyrighted by National Geographic Society 1914 CONTENTS I. THE SPIDER WORLD. II. THE INSECT WORLD. STRAIGHT-WINGED INSECTS (_Orthoptera_). ORDER OF THE BUGS (_Hemiptera_). THE BEETLES (_Coleoptera_). TWO-WINGED INSECTS (_Diptera_). FEATHERED INSECTS (_Lepidoptera_). NERVE-WINGED INSECTS (_Neuroptera_). THE STINGING INSECTS (_Hymenoptera_). III. THE WORLD OF MYRIAPODS AND A SINGLE LAND CRUSTACEAN. BOOK OF MONSTERS The pictures in this book are portraits of creatures which are as much the real inhabitants of the world as we are, and have all the rights of ownership that we have, but, because their own struggle for existence so often crosses ours, many of them are our enemies. Indeed, man's own real struggle for the supremacy of the world is his struggle to control these tiny monsters. The plague of the middle ages, which spread like some mysterious supernatural curse over Europe and carried off millions of people, the yellow fever that has haunted the coasts of South America, the malaria which has strewn the tropics of the world with millions of graves, have been caused by the activities of two of these monsters so universally present in our homes as to have become almost domesticated creatures, the flea and the mosquito. During these last two decades these have come under our control, and the flies which leave a colony of germs at every footstep will not much longer be tolerated, indeed, every creature that bites and sucks our blood or that crawls over our food and dishes has been placed under suspicion.