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basket you can leave at a cottager's house, and the bottles are
indispensable to every angler-naturalist. What are you running after,
Jacko? Oh! I see; one of the most beautiful insects that are found in
this country. Ah! he is too quick for you. It is the brilliant
steel-blue dragon-fly. Let us sit down for a few minutes and watch its
flight. How rapidly it flies, now pursuing the course of the river,
now suddenly darting back again. It is the _Agrion virgo_, the most
splendid of all the dragon-flies, even rivalling the gorgeously
coloured insects of tropical countries. All the dragon-flies proceed
from water larvae; strange creatures of unbecoming forms and ferocious
dispositions. The mouth, or rather the lower lip of the larva is of
very singular form. Two jaw-like organs are at the end of the lip, its
basal portion being articulated to the head; this mask, as it has been
called, is folded beneath the head when in repose, but it can be
suddenly shot out in front of the head so as to seize any small
creatures that may pass near it which the larva thinks good to eat.
Imagine one of your arms being joined on to your chin, bend your elbow
up till your hand covers your face--this will represent the dragon
larva with the mask in repose; now shoot out your arm in a straight
line from the head--this will represent the mask unfolded and in use;
your fingers may be considered to represent the jaws of the creature.
When the larva wishes to turn into an insect, it leaves the water and
creeps up the stem of some water weed or other object out of the
water, bursts its skin, and commences its new state of existence. If
we look about us near the water side, we shall be sure to find some
empty pupa skins. Here are two on this sedge; you see a slit on the
back through which the dragon-fly has come out. The dragon-flies are
the largest and most active of our British insects, and, to quote the
descriptive words of Professor Rymer Jones, "are pre-eminently
distinguished by the rapidity of their flight and the steadiness of
their evolutions while 'hawking' for prey in the vicinity of ponds and
marshy grounds, where in hot summer weather they are everywhere to be
met with. Equally conspicuous from their extreme activity, their
gorgeous colours, and the exquisite structure of their wings, they
might be regarded as the monarchs of the insect race. The very names
selected for them by entomologists would testify the perfection of
their attr