nd the head there
is another distinct part. This is called the thorax, which means chest.
Behind that there is a pointed part of the body, which is called the
abdomen. Then, if you look again, you will see that all these little
creatures are alike in that they have six jointed legs."

"And are they all good, like the bee and the butterfly?" asked Betty,
who wasn't always a good little girl herself, and who thought it would
be much nicer if insects were naughty sometimes.

"Not all, dear," answered Mrs. Reece; "some do us real service, but
others are troublesome; insects are such hungry little fellows, and they
don't have chocolate cake every day to keep them from getting hungry.
They are hungry when they are babies and hungry when they grow up. Some
eat all they can see--like a little boy I know--and some prefer the
tender leaves and twigs. Some care only for the sweet sap flowing into
the new leaves and buds. And still others like best the tender new roots
of plants."

"Mother, what are the baddest ones?" asked Betty.

"Pooh! I know," said Jimmie; "the beetles are, because they eat
everything. Why, they'd eat the buttons off your coat or the nose off
your face or--"

"Jim! Jim! do tell the truth! The beetles, and bugs, too, are the most
troublesome. Many of the bugs are such tiny little creatures that it is
hard to realize that they can hurt a plant. But bugs have sucking beaks.
With these beaks they bore into the leaves or the buds of the plant, and
then by means of tiny muscles at the back of the mouth they pump up the
sap. To be sure, one little pump could do no harm; but think of millions
of little sucking beaks, millions of little pumps busy at work on a
single plant! Do you remember the pansies mother had in the winter, and
how they were all covered by green plant-lice? Well, those are bugs
called aphids. You remember they were pale green, just the color of the
plant, and so transparent and soft they looked most harmless. The scale
insects are very troublesome, too, but mother doesn't know anything
about them."

"Oh, I know what _they_ are," announced Jimmie, "they get into the fruit
trees."

"And sometimes onto shrubs, too. Mother has heard of a scale insect out
in California which has been a great nuisance to fruit-growers. A
certain ladybug finds this cottony-cushion scale a tender morsel, so
many ladybugs were taken out there to help the owners of the fruit farms
get rid of the scale."

"Did they c