NEUROPTERA. — LIBELLULID&. 35 


horse stingers and dragon flies, the first of which is founded upon a 
vulgar error ; the second is more fancifully correct, as the insects, both 
in their appearance and voracious habits, are certainly more entitled 
to the name of dragons than that of “‘ demoiselles,”’ as they are called 
by the French. The body is very much elongated, narrow, and nearly 
linear ; the head large, semiglobose, or transverse-subtrigonate; the 
thorax thick and deep; and the abdomen long, with inarticulate apical 
appendages (jig. 62.1. Libellula Scotica) ; the antennz are short, and 
very slender, with from five to eight joints, of which the two basal 
ones are the thickest; the terminal ones being subulate (fig. 62. 7.) ; 
the eyes are very large, uniting on the top of the head (fig. 62. 2. 
head of L. depressa ; the figures 62. 2. to 13. represent details of this 
species). The upper facets are of a larger size than the lower; Mr. 
Ashton has communicated a memoir upon this structure of the eyes, 
in these and some other insects, to the Entomological Society. The 
ocelli are three, the two lateral ones placed at the sides, and the an- 
terior one in front of a vesicle on the forehead. The mouth is well 
described by Latreille, as being “larvatum,” or masked ; the lips (es- 
pecially the lower one) being of a large size, and the palpi not elon- 
gated beyond the mouth ( /ig.62.2.); the upper lip is transverse, with 
the angles rounded off; the mandibles (fg. 62. 3.) are horny, very thick 
and powerful, and multidentate ; the maxille ( fig. 62. 4.) are more 
elongated, dilated in the centre, armed with strong terminal teeth, and 
destitute of an external lobe, the place of which is supplied by the max- 
illary palpus, which is short, thick, and hirsute, apparently only shortly 
articulated at the base, and terminated by an acuminate point; the lower 
lip (fig. 62. 5.) is singularly constructed (the true labium, xx, arising in 
/Eshna, from a distinct piece ( fig.62.14. x, which is obsolete in Libellula), 
Dp 2 
