ongs
to the Neuroptera.

What jaws!

How do you suppose it makes its tunnel?

If we give it plenty of sand, and keep very quiet, perhaps it will go to
work.

There! it is throwing the sand about.

May says it is using its own head as a trowel. Yes, it is shovelling the
sand away with its head.

Why is Ned laughing? Oh, see the ant lion he is watching! An ant slid
part way down its funnel and tried to climb out again, and the ant lion
down below is flinging sand at it.

There! it has succeeded in making the poor ant slip; down it goes, and
now the ant lion has seized it and dragged it down under the ground.

It is easy to find these pit-falls of the ant lion in sand banks in the
summer-time.

Yes, May, the ant lions eat many ants, and they moult and grow, and,
finally, they, too, make a little cocoon about themselves.

Yes, the little silken room they weave we call a cocoon, but the ant
lions make theirs of silk and sand.

[Illustration]

Within the cocoon they become motionless pupae, and finally appear as
silver-winged little creatures that bear no resemblance to the
large-jawed, ever hungry, ant lion.

May says she thinks the Neuroptera differ from all the other orders in
the way the larvae transform.

That is true, May, they do.

In no other order that we have studied do the insects go into the pupal
state to undergo the final transformation.

Who remembers what the young of insects that undergo an incomplete
metamorphosis are sometimes called?

Dear me, you all remember!

Yes, the young are sometimes called nymphs.

The nymphs do not change into pupae.

The young grasshoppers do not change into motionless pupae, they just
keep on growing until they are perfect adults.

Young grasshoppers are sometimes called nymphs instead of larvae.

[Illustration]

THE LITTLE CADDICE FLIES

Here we are in the woods again.

How sweet it smells!

Let us sit down by this brook and look into it.

It is such a clear little stream, with fine sand and little pebbles at
the bottom.

What has Nell found that pleases her so?

She says she sees some little bars of sand moving about.

Ned says they are not sand bars but tubes of sand, containing a little
live thing.

The truth is, this sand bag is a house, and its occupant is a larva.

[Illustration]

See the black head come popping out, and the tiny fore legs.

The larva does not come entirely out, you see, but pulls its house along
wi