You see the simple earthworm is the A, B, C of a lot of things; and even Mr. Darwin's famous book doesn't contain all there is to be learned about him in books and in personal interviews with Mr. Earthworm himself. A farm boy to whom the writer read the story of the earthworm, when asked how he thought the worm could turn in his burrow when it fits him so closely, said, "Why, he turns around in that little room at the end of the hall," thereby solving, as I think, a problem that puzzled Mr. Darwin, and which he left unsolved. [Illustration: SINFUL TACTICS OF A SACRED BEETLE The beetle pushing backward is the owner of the ball and is on his way--as he thinks--to his burrow. The other is altering the direction toward his own burrow. Fabre's book on the Sacred Beetle--the tumblebug of our fields and roadways--tells how the thing came out.] CHAPTER VI (JUNE) Go to the ant, thou sluggard; Consider her ways, and be wise. --_Proverbs_ 6:6. THE LITTLE FARMERS WITH SIX FEET I don't believe I've ever heard anybody say anything against an angleworm; although not many people, even to this day, I'll be bound, realize what a useful citizen the angleworm is. But now we come to a class of farmers that, as a class, are positively disliked; farmers that nobody has a good word for, that nobody wants for neighbors. The charge against them is that, like the man in the Bible, they are always reaping where they have not sown; always helping themselves to other people's crops--bushels of wheat, bushels of rye, tons of cotton, loads of hay and apples and peaches and plums; and nice garden vegetables; and even the trees in the wood lot. It is estimated, for instance, that the chinch-bug helps himself every year to $30,000,000 worth of Uncle Sam's grain; while other insects make away with 10 per cent of his hay crop, 20 per cent of mother's garden vegetables, $10,000,000 worth of father's tobacco; and the Hessian fly sees to it that between 10 and 25 per cent of the farmer's wheat never gets to mill. "Yes, and sometimes it's 50-50 between the farmer and the fly," said the high school boy, who often spends his vacation with a country cousin. Then there are insects that injure and destroy forest trees because they like to eat the leaves or the wood itself; and some 300 kinds of insects that make themselves free with other people's orchards. I. CONSIDERING THE ANT But, as I said a few moments ago, it takes all sorts of people to make a world; and as there are good and bad citizens among men, so there are good and bad among insects. Indeed there are so many useful insects that help make or fertilize the soil by grinding up earth and burying things in it, that even this chapter, which is rather long, as you see, can't begin to tell about all of them. So suppose we give our space to a few by way of example, and then look up others in other books in the library. AMOUNT OF WORK DONE BY ANTS