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.