nly specimen of the kind in this
country, to the best of my belief. A unique, sir, and there is a
pleasure in exclusive possession. Not another beetle like that short of
South America, sir.

--I was glad to hear that there were no more like it in this
neighborhood, the present supply of cockroaches answering every purpose,
so far as I am concerned, that such an animal as this would be likely to
serve.

--Here are my bee-parasites,--said the Scarabee, showing me a box full of
glass slides, each with a specimen ready mounted for the microscope. I
was most struck with one little beast flattened out like a turtle,
semi-transparent, six-legged, as I remember him, and every leg terminated
by a single claw hooked like a lion's and as formidable for the size of
the creature as that of the royal beast.

--Lives on a bumblebee, does he?--I said. That's the way I call it.
Bumblebee or bumblybee and huckleberry. Humblebee and whortleberry for
people that say Woos-ses-ter and Nor-wich.

--The Scarabee did not smile; he took no interest in trivial matters like
this.

--Lives on a bumblebee. When you come to think of it, he must lead a
pleasant kind of life. Sails through the air without the trouble of
flying. Free pass everywhere that the bee goes. No fear of being
dislodged; look at those six grappling-hooks. Helps himself to such
juices of the bee as he likes best; the bee feeds on the choicest
vegetable nectars, and he feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or
in the perfumed pavilion of the fairest and sweetest flowers. Think what
tents the hollyhocks and the great lilies spread for him! And wherever he
travels a band of music goes with him, for this hum which wanders by us
is doubtless to him a vast and inspiring strain of melody.--I thought all
this, while the Scarabee supposed I was studying the minute characters of
the enigmatical specimen.

--I know what I consider your pediculus melittae, I said at length.

Do you think it really the larva of meloe?

--Oh, I don't know much about that, but I think he is the best cared for,
on the whole, of any animal that I know of; and if I wasn't a man I
believe I had rather be that little sybarite than anything that feasts at
the board of nature.

--The question is, whether he is the larva of meloe,--the Scarabee said,
as if he had not heard a word of what I had just been saying.----If I
live a few years longer it shall be settled, sir; and if my epitaph can
say