The same essay tells about the sacred beetle of the Egyptians, the insect that we know as the "tumblebug"; why first the Egyptians and then the Greeks regarded this bug as sacred; and why men and women wear imitation beetles for brooches and watch-charms to-day. But the greatest work on this famous beetle has been written by the famous French observer Fabre, "The Homer of the Insect." You will find this book, "The Sacred Beetle," in any good public library. Among other things Fabre gives a very minute description of the variety of tools used by the beetle; tells how two beetles roll a ball;[17] how they dig their holes; how they "play possum," and then (I'm almost ashamed to tell this) rob their partners! How they wipe the dust out of their eyes; about a tumblebug's wheelbarrow; why their underground burrows sometimes have winding ways; why there are fewer beetles in hard times; about their autumn gaieties; their value as weather-prophets, and how Fabre's little son Paul helped him in writing his great book. [17] You've often noticed them, haven't you? Now read Fabre's wonderful book and see how much you _didn't_ notice. Allen's essay, "The Day of the Canker Worm" in "Nature's Work Shop," tells many interesting things about the Cicada, the locust that only comes once in seventeen years;[18] about Lady Locust's saw (it looks like a cut-out puzzle); about the clay galleries the locusts build when they come up out of the ground; how many times they have to put on new dresses before they finally look like locusts; why, at one stage of the process, they look like ghosts, and how they blow up their wings as you do a bicycle tire. [18] "And that's once too many," as the old farmer said; and we must agree with him when we think only of the damage they do. (Fabre's book on the sacred beetle also deals, incidentally, with the Cicada.) Often one thing is named after another from a merely fanciful resemblance, as, for instance, the "sea horse." But the mole cricket really seems to have been patterned on the mole; either that, or both the four-legged and the six-legged moles were patterned after something _else_. Mole crickets are very useful little people to know. You should see how they protect their nest-eggs from the weather and how and why they move their nests up and down with the change of the seasons. What good to the soil do the insects do that eat up dead-wood? Scott Elliott, in his "Romance of Plant Life," deals with this subject.