It lurks in flowers and preys on honey-sucking insects, and one can easily imagine the unequal struggle between it and a butterfly, or realize that it might come off victor in a fight with bees or wasps. There are such romantic scenes and bloodcurdling spectacles to be observed in this world of insects that I cannot understand why there are so few who, having ample time, have not the patience to sit and watch them as Fabre and others less well known have done. No schoolroom training in observation can compare in value with the outdoor observations of living insects. To look and wait and think and try to understand; what habits of observation, perseverance and reflection these actions cultivate! [Illustration] A BUG THAT IS ALWAYS WALKING AROUND (_Brochymena arborea_, Say) No photograph in the collection illustrates better the marvelous variety of form which abounds in the jungle of our back yards. To the naked eye all the interesting details are invisible and one's hand instinctively brushes the intruder from the table where it has crawled in to take a look at a human being. The spotted, crablike legs, covered with bristles, the beadlike facet eyes, the oyster shell shaped body, the moving antennæ all covered with white scales, the curious trunk or sucking pipe descending from the chin, give to the creature a personality which combines something of the wistful with the curious. And yet this is, as my friend Dr. Schwartz says, "just one of those bugs that is always walking around on our plants and nobody seems to know just what it is doing." [Illustration] THE TARNISHED PLANT BUG (_Lygus pratensis_, Linn.) If you have ever carefully tended young vegetable plants, set them out by hand and watched over them, you will certainly have made the acquaintance of this vicious little creature a quarter of an inch long. At least you will have found where he drove his proboscis and sucked the juices from your tender plant, leaving his irritating fluids behind to distort the tissues of the leaf or bud. He lives in the rubbish which was left littering up the garden and is waiting now for spring to come when he will make his appearance and do whatever damage is necessary for his existence. You cannot spray him with kerosene for he is too agile, skipping away from you in the sunlight, but when his mate lays her eggs, and the young nymphs with wingless bodies crawl about, you can kill them with a dose of kerosene oil emulsion which will close their breathing pores and suffocate them. [Illustration] THE LANTERN FLY BUG (_Helicoptera variegata_, Van D.) This creature belongs to the family of lantern flies and is also related to the little leaf hoppers which one startles from the grass by the hundred in walking across a lawn or meadow. It is a small, grey bug, not a quarter of an inch long, and quite insignificant when looked at with the naked eye, yet it is quite as strange in form as any of the prehistoric monsters.