21 8 DIVERSIONS OF A NATURALIST 



is big as flies go, and with a pocket lens, or even with- 

 out one, you can readily see the dwindled second pair 

 of wings standing out clearly from the body behind the 

 attachment of the first pair. These " balancers " are of 

 the shape of a tennis racket, or a ball-headed club. 

 They serve no longer as organs of flight, but as auditory 

 organs. A minute parasitic insect (Stylops) which lives 

 in bees has only one pair of wings, but in this case it is 

 the hinder pair which are developed, the front pair being 

 shrunk to rudimentary lappets. 



The daddy-long-legs, or common crane-fly, is a little 

 less than an inch long and a little more than an inch 

 across the spread wings. Its power of flight is not well 

 developed, and its six long legs are moved so slowly and 

 awkwardly that one would say that its powers of walking 

 and running are also feeble. Their strange movements 

 have led some unknown poet to imagine the " daddy " 

 saying : 



" My six long legs, all here and there, 

 Oppress my bosom with despair." 



In reality these queerly-moving long legs serve the 

 insect effectively in making its way among the closely- 

 set blades of grass about which it crawls. The legs 

 easily come off, and the loss of one does not appear to 

 be a serious matter. Probably the easy detachment of 

 a leg enables the fly to escape if one of them gets caught 

 and nipped in overlapping blades of grass — though such 

 a throwing away of a limb seems a rather reckless 

 proceeding, especially since the insect has no power of 

 " regeneration " as it is called, that is, of growing a new 

 leg to replace the lost one. There are several well- 

 known instances of animals which have the power of 

 breaking off a leg or the tail if seized by an enemy or 



