COPULATION AND OVIPOSITION IN THE DRAGONFLY. ^ 



occupied by a thick growth of Carcx sp. from one to two feet 

 high. There was little or no vegetation other than algal in the 

 water of the pond, and hardly any animal life of much more 

 than microscopic size, since the only animals noticed were a 

 species of Gi/rinus and the mollusc Acroloxiis laciistris (Miiller). 

 The weather was very fine, but rather misty, with little or no 

 wind, and hot for the time of year. 



The Syinpetrum were united in pairs in the tandem position, 

 and the females of each pair were ovipositing, flicking the surface 

 from time to time with the abdomen. In one case there were 

 tJiree individuals coupled tandem, two males in front, and a 

 female behind. I was able to secure them all, but they disjoined 

 themselves as soon as they were in the net, so that I could not 

 determine which male was the foremost. Mr. H. Campion has 

 kindly examined these specimens for me, and besides identifying 

 the species, he pointed out that one male (which was decidedly the 

 smaller) had probably emerged more recently than the other, as 

 was shown by the more hyaline wings and duller stigmata, com- 

 pared with the more deeply-stained wings and bright red stigmata 

 of the larger male. Mr. Campion is inclined to think that the 

 latter was the functional male, and that it was the smaller and 

 less mature insect that, clasping the functional male per colliim, 

 caused the unusual phenomenon of three dragon- flies flying 

 tandem. The smaller male also had an abnormal wing ; the tip 

 of one hind- wing had been regenerated after an injury early in 

 its development. Besides the coupled pairs, one or two unattached 

 males w'ere generally to be seen hovering over the pond or flying 

 wildly in its neighbourhood. 



I was fortunate to see the meeting of an unattached male 

 with a female. Their approach was unnoticed, but they met 

 with some commotion of wings over the middle of the pond and 

 immediately united, the male seizing the female by the back of 

 the head with his anal appendages, and the female curving her 

 abdomen under that of the male and coupling her ovipositor with 

 the copulatory apparatus of his second abdominal segment. In 

 this position they drifted rather than flew down to the ground 

 among some stones on the bank. On walking over to find them 

 on the stony ground I disturbed them, and they flew in a drifting 

 manner into the grass some twenty yards from the pond. There 

 I was able to approach them closely, finally lying down and 

 examining them with a pocket lens ; therefore they were not at 

 all readily alarmed. The male grasped the herbage with his legs, 

 while all iuit the terminal segments of his abdomen were straight 

 and in a line with the thorax, and not curved, as in Calvert's 

 figure of MscJnia constricta, Say (P. P. Calvert, 1906, 'Entomo- 

 logical News,' vol. xvii, pi. vii), and Walker's figure of the same 

 species (E. M. Walker, 1912, ' The North American Dragonflies 

 of the Genus jEshna,' University of Toronto Studies, Biological 



