Citrinus is one of a large number of brothers and sisters, more than fifty indeed, who were hatched from tiny reddish eggs which the mother laid under her own body. Before laying the eggs, Citrinus's mother had built a thin shell or roof of wax over her back, and after the eggs were laid she soon died and her body shriveled up, leaving the eggs safely housed under the waxen roof. When the baby Orange-dwellers were hatched, each had six legs and a delicate little sucking-beak projecting from his small plump body. Citrinus and his brothers and sisters scrambled out from under the wax shell and started out each for himself to explore the world. First, however, each thrust his beak into the leaf and took a good drink of sap. Then they were ready to begin their journeying. But a terrible thing happened! Just as Citrinus was pulling his beak out of the soft leaf, he saw a great six-legged beast, in shape like a turtle, with shining red-and-black back and fearful snapping jaws. On each side of its head, which it moved slowly from side to side, it had an immense eye, which looked like a hemispherical window, with hundreds of panes of glass in it. The beast's legs were large and powerful, and on each foot there were two claws, each of them as long as the whole body of Citrinus. Truly this was an appalling sight, and all of the little Orange-dwellers ran as fast as they could, which, unfortunately, wasn't very fast. The beast leisurely caught up in its great jaws one after another of Citrinus's brothers and sisters, and crushed and tore their tender bodies to pieces and ate them! Now this beast, which seemed so large to Citrinus, was what is to us a very small and pretty insect, one of the lady-bird beetles. These beetles care for no other food than plump Orange-dwellers and other equally toothsome small insects; and instead of being sorry for its victims, we are glad it eats them! This seems very cruel indeed, but there are so many, many millions of the Orange-dwellers all sucking the juice of orange-trees that although they are so small, and each one drinks so little sap, yet altogether they do a great amount of damage to the orange-trees, often killing all the trees in a large orchard. So the lady-birds are a great help to the orange-growers.