are still for more than a few seconds."

"Can you find their eggs?" asked Betty.

"Yes; their eggs are laid in the water or fastened to the stems of water
plants. See that damsel fly, the slender, smaller, pretty-colored
darning-needle? Well, it goes entirely under water, cuts a slit in the
stem with the sharp end of the abdomen, and lays the eggs in the groove
it has made. And they lay thousands of eggs."

"When they hatch out, what do they look like?" asked Jack, who grew
daily more interested in the creatures about him, and who, in the years
to come, was destined to be a great scientist.

"It looks a little like the mother," said Ben Gile, taking out his pipe,
"but not much. It goes through a great many changes before it is really
grown up. All told, the growth takes from a few months to a whole year.
The young one, called a nymph, is an ugly little fellow, dingy black
with six sprawling legs, two staring eyes, and a big lower lip which
covers up its cruel face like a mask. It is a true ogre, lurking under
stones and in rubbish at the bottom of the pond seeking whom it may
devour. It eats the smaller and weaker nymphs."

"Oh," said Betty, studying the picture the guide had drawn, "what an
ugly, ugly fellow!"

"It changes its skin a good many times, and sometimes it looks a little
better while the skin is still clean and light gray. But it soon turns
dingy again. See these three little leaf-shaped gills I've drawn?"

"They are like the screw on a steamer," commented Jimmie.

"They are, a little. Well, this chap uses these gills for the same
purpose as the steamer uses its screw--to scull through the water."

"What happens when it changes?" asked Jack.

"After the nymph has its full growth, some sunny morning soon after
daylight, it makes its way up out of the water on to a stem and waits
quietly for the old dark skin to split. Then out crawls a soft-skinned
creature with gauzy wings. But the body is so moist and weak it has to
wait awhile for the warm sunshine to harden the skin and strengthen the
muscle. When this is done the new dragon-fly, with its glistening body,
flies out from the pond in the bright, warm light."

"Then does it live forever?" asked Betty.

"No; it dies after twenty-five to forty-five days of its flight. Here,
Jack, catch that fellow!"

There was a wild scramble, but every time Jack just missed the
dragon-fly. Finally Betty lent him her broad hat, and at last Jack
caught the insect