But he
looked at it as a coin-collector would look at a Pescennius Niger, if the
coins of that Emperor are as scarce as they used to be when I was
collecting half-penny tokens and pine-tree shillings and battered bits of
Roman brass with the head of Gallienus or some such old fellow on them.
--A beauty!--he exclaimed,--and the only 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.
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