--So I went into the Scarabee's parlor, lodging-room, study, laboratory,
and museum,--a--single apartment applied to these various uses, you
understand.

--I wish I had time to have you show me all your treasures,--I said,
--but I am afraid I shall hardly be able to do more than look at the
bee-parasite. But what a superb butterfly you have in that case!

--Oh, yes, yes, well enough,--came from South America with the beetle
there; look at him! These Lepidoptera are for children to play with,
pretty to look at, so some think. Give me the Coleoptera, and the kings
of the Coleoptera are the beetles! Lepidoptera and Neuroptera for little
folks; Coleopteras for men, sir!

--The particular beetle he showed me in the case with the magnificent
butterfly was an odious black wretch that one would say, Ugh! at, and
kick out of his path, if he did not serve him worse than that. 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