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Excerpt from Marvels of Insect Life: A Popular Account of Structure and Habit
A general knowledge of insect life quite changes the character of the great out-of-doors. The student of insects need never look far for diversified types of entertainment and instruction. From the time the buds break until the frost, no matter what type the country. There is always something going on; the eternal struggle for existence, the ways of the sluggard, the efforts of the thrifty, the magic of the conjurer of transformation. And with the close of the clay darkness ushers in another phase of life. The songs of the nocturnal insects show other legions have awakened and a powerful light forms a magnet for myriad forms that fly only at night.
The writer well remembers the delight of his little daughters when he first demonstrated to them the possibility of caring for several crickets in a tiny cage, where the insects soon commenced vigorously singing. \vhen the children were a year older they had a veritable chorus of the singing insects in cages. There were three species of crickets, the buzzing meadow locust, the chattering cone~head and the Katy - did adding a basso effect. The interest in this easily ac quired but novel collection spread like a prairie fire and my daughters' little friends and their friends in turn were enthused and astonished to sut' their little insect songsters actually sing by raising and rubbing the wings. And is this not an object lesson? Of the wonders going on about us. Underfoot. In our busy lives we are too apt to gaze in far perspective upon the paths we trod or look upon the neighboring foliage as merely something green. While actually the grass beneath our feet forms dense jungles with a life more elaborate than the great brakes and dank forests of the tropics.
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