DRAGON FLIES. 273 



lace-wing, of surpassing elegance and beauty, are as commonly 

 overlooked, on account of their comparatively inconspicuous size. 



To begin then, in deference to their superior magnitude 

 (which in some species constitute them the largest of British 

 insects) with the dragon-flies, popularly called by the Trench 

 " Demoiselles/ 3 partly, perhaps, in compliment to their beauty, 

 partly as a satire on Amazonian propensities. By the ignorant 

 among ourselves they are known as " horse-stingers," a com- 

 plete misnomer, seeing that the blood wherewith they delight to 

 moisten their carnivorous jaws is never, by any accident, taken 

 from those warm red streams which flow through the veins of 

 beast or man, but consists of that colder, whiter fluid, which 

 pervades the tender frames of butterfly and case-fly the innocent 

 creatures they are ever seeking to devour. 



Since our readers may not, just at pleasure, be able to 

 capture a living specimen of the large green dragon-fly* 

 now so abundant, let them look, en attendant, at one of a 

 smaller species t depicted by our pencil. Though a minim of his 

 kind, is he not a glorious yet formidable-looking creature ? 

 Mark his four large ever-expanded wings of glassy membrane, 

 with their beautiful lace-like nervures, not distributed for mere 

 adornment, but in every meander serving as channels for the 

 circulating air, which, thus spread over the surface of the 

 pinion, confers on tin's insect a marked pre-eminence in power 

 and permanence of flight. Observe his straight, slender body 



* JEslma varia. t Agrion. 



