tumble-bug

So he just grumbled to himself as he speared a fat tumble-bug with his beak:

Seven O'Clock Stories Robert Gordon Anderson

One ended up on its back like a tumble-bug, wriggling.

Space Tug Murray Leinster 1935

Fisher, suppose you go down to the pound and dare that tumble-bug to hold the auction this afternoon.

Bar-20 Days Clarence Edward Mulford 1919

You let me think you were a rose-beetle and yesterday the snail told me you are a tumble-bug.

The Adventures of Maya the Bee Waldemar Bonsels 1919

So a large tumble-bug came from the west, out of the quagmires of Philistia and followed after the animated figure, yelping and spluttering, "Morals, not art!"

Figures of Earth James Branch Cabell 1918

I suppose he could not be insulted by Ursula any more than the king could be insulted by a tumble-bug.

The Mysterious Stranger; A Romance by Mark Twain [pseud.] with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth. 1916

Haeckel stops digging up old bones and classifying sea microscopic organisms long enough to write "Monism," expressing his belief that God is anything and everything from Orion to a tumble-bug.

Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers 1906

You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug, stern in air, heaving at his bit of dung, imagining that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right ....

Mark Twain, a Biography — Volume I, Part 1: 1835-1866 Albert Bigelow Paine 1899

You have described a callow fool, a self-sufficient ass, a mere human tumble-bug, stern in air, heaving at his bit of dung, imagining that he is remodeling the world and is entirely capable of doing it right ....

Mark Twain, a Biography. Complete Albert Bigelow Paine 1899

Sisyphus and Atlas as ancestors of the tumble-bug.

Mark Twain, a Biography — Volume I, Part 2: 1835-1866 Albert Bigelow Paine 1899