126 STATES OF INSECTS. (Larva.) 
other larvee this part is usually small and inconspicuous, 
and serves merely for retaining the food and assisting in 
its deglutition; but in these it is by far the largest organ 
of the mouth, which when closed it entirely conceals? 
and it not only retains but actually seizes the animal’s 
prey, by means of a very singular pair of jaws with which 
it is furnished. Conceive your under-lip (to have re- 
course, as Reaumur on another occasion?, to such com- 
parison,) to be horny instead of fleshy, and to be elon- 
gated perpendicularly downwards", so as to wrap over 
your chin and extend to its bottom,—that this elongation 
is there expanded into a triangular convex plate‘, at- 
tached to it by a joint‘, so as to bend upwards again and 
fold over the face as high as the nose, concealing not 
only the chin and the first-mentioned elongation, but the 
mouth and part of the cheeks*: conceive, moreover, that 
to the end of this last-mentioned plate are fixed two other 
convex ones, so broad as to cover the whole nose and 
temples f,—that these can open at pleasure, transversely 
like a pair of jaws, so as to expose the nose and mouth, 
and that their inner edges where they meet are cut into 
numerous sharp teeth or spines, or armed with one or 
more long and sharp claws ®:—you will then have as ac- 
curate an idea as my powers of description can give, of 
the strange conformation of the under-lip in the larvee of 
the tribes of Libellulina ; which conceals the mouth and 
face precisely as I have supposed a similar construction 
of your lip would do yours. You will probably admit 
* Reaum. v. 155. ° Ibid. vi. ¢. xxxvii.f. 7.5 p. ° Ibid. mee. 
4 Thid. f. 6. p. © Ibid. Compare f. 4 with /. 6, 7. 
f Ibid. ¢. xxxvi. f. 12.5 ue. 
® Ibid. n e, and xxxviii. f. 7, dc.; De Geer ii. ¢. xix. f. 17. d g. 
al : 
