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DRAGON-FLY. 
Butterfly of that strange dissimilitude in point of 
form under which one and the same ahimal is 
destined to appear in the different periods of its 
existence. Perhaps few persons not particularly 
conversant in the history of insects would imagine 
that these highly brilliant and lively animals, 
which may be seen flying with such strength and 
rapidity round the meadows, and pursuing the 
smaller insects with the velocity of a hawk, had 
once been inhabitants of the water, and that they 
had resided for a very long space of time in that 
element before they assumed their flying form. 
Of the Libellulae there are many different species, 
both native and exotic. The most remarkable of 
the English species is the Lihelliila mria or 
great variegated Libellula. This insect makes 
its appearance principally towards the decline of 
summer, and is an animal of singular beauty: its 
general length is about three inches from head 
to tail, and the wings, when expanded, measure 
near four inches from tip to tip : the head is very 
large, and affixed to the thorax by an extremely 
slender neck* the eyes occupy by far the greatest 
part of the head, and are of a pearly blue-grey 
cast, with a varying lustre: the front is greenish 
yellow; the thorax of the same colour, but marked 
by longitudinal black streaks: the body, which is 
* It is here called by a new title, the more securely to di- 
sfinguish it from the L, grandis of Linnaeus, with which it is 
generally confounded; partly from the misapplication of Syno- 
nyms by Linnaeus himself. 
