“One of the joys of your time of life, I am sure,” resumed Uncle Paul, as he and his hearers seated themselves in the shade of an old oak tree amid the humming and whirring of insect life all about them, “is the study of the little creatures of field and farm and forest, so interesting in their mode of life, so varied in their forms and colors. You chase the splendid butterfly from flower to flower, you take up the cockchafer and put it on a bed of fresh leaves, with a straw you drive the cricket from its hole. The insect that amuses you can also instruct you. In our modest studies let us now have a little talk on this subject. “What is this tiny creature with the stout coat-of-mail of chestnut color? Its large head, showing parallel folds that might have been carved by a sculptor’s hand, is armed with two branching nippers which open like a pair of tongs and then close, mangling between their teeth the finger they have seized. Woe to the giddy-pate that lets himself be caught by them! The trap closes tighter and tighter and never lets go. “But, vigorous as are its mandibles, the insect is not one to be afraid of, provided only you look out for those nippers. For all its threatening aspect, it is at bottom a peaceful creature. Catch it by one leg and it will fly round and round like the June-bug. It is called the stag-beetle, a name that explains itself, for it has branching mandibles resembling a stag’s horns, and it belongs to the family of beetles. Put the two words together and you have ‘stag-beetle.’ “The singular creature has not always been as we see it to-day. In its youth, not later than last year, it had neither its present mandibles nor its six legs nor its chestnut-colored coat-of-mail. In fact, its form had nothing in common with what we now behold. Then it was a big, fat worm, with fine white skin, crawling on legs so small and feeble as hardly to deserve mention. “The whole animal consisted of little more than a crawling stomach unprovided with any protection. The head alone was fortified with a substantial skull of horn, and it also bore, one on the right side of the mouth, the other on the left, two short but strong teeth adapted to cutting in pieces the wood of the oak, its sole nourishment. “Such a worm, entirely naked, evidently cannot live in the open air, where the thousand little roughnesses of the ground would be continually wounding its delicate skin. It must have a safe shelter that it need not leave until it has become the well-armored insect we now see. The grub of the stag-beetle does in fact live inside the oak, which affords it at once food and lodging. There, in the depths of the tree-trunk, is its inviolable retreat.