CURIOUS ASPECT OF NEW-BORN INSECT. 315 



We have only to wait patiently for the lapse 

 of a little time, and our desires will be fully 

 gratified in beholding all these symptoms of 

 weakness and imperfection disappear. The imago, 

 attaching itself either to the cast-off pupa-case, 

 or to some other convenient support, first stretches 

 out one organ, and then another; its body loses 

 the coating of moisture which bedewed it, its 

 various parts become firm and hardened, and its 

 colours come forth in all their beauty. All the 

 parts which had been forced into a constrained 

 position, now relieved, assume that which is 

 natural to them in the perfect insect; and the 

 wings no longer have a questionable appearance, 

 but become expanded into those light and ex- 

 quisite structures which form the peculiar beauty 

 and characteristic of many insects, displaying 

 themselves almost magically in the form, it may 

 be, of the thin, transparent membrane of the fly, 

 or as the painted tissue of the moth or butterfly, 

 extending frequently to five or six times their 

 previous dimensions. 



Here let us take up, as an illustration of these 

 beautiful and interesting phenomena, the conclud- 

 ing portion of the history of the dragon-fly, com- 



