360 THE NATURAL HISTORY 



The delicate Lace-winged-flies follow the Dragon- 

 flies, and one species, which we have frequently met 

 with, the CJirysopa perla, is eminently remarkable for 

 its beauty in the perfect state, its singular mode of 

 oviposition, and the useful labours performed by its 

 larvae. To the fastidious collector, however, one of its 

 distinguishing characteristics is objectionable to the 

 last degree, it emits an odour which we imagine all the 

 resources of Gattie and Peirce would be powerless to 

 subdue or disguise. Kirby and Spence have most 

 accurately defined it as resembling that of human 

 ordure, -and our own experience, on many occasions, 

 enables us to endorse their verdict most emphatically. 

 Taking into consideration the diminutive proportions 

 of this slender-bodied insect, not exceeding an inch 

 in length, with the most filmy wings imaginable, and 

 being aware of the fact that at no period of its 

 existence has it subsisted on food of an offensive cha- 

 racter, we cannot resist a feeling of amazement, not 

 only at the potency, but the peculiarity also of its dis- 

 gusting stench. This is the more striking, as some 

 species of lady-bird, the food of which, in all their 

 active stages, is exactly the same as that of the larvae 

 of Ckrysopa, gives out a somewhat unpleasant smell 

 resembling in nothing that of the latter. 



The body and wings of the insect under consider- 

 ation are a very delicate green, and its compound eyes, 

 viewed through a lens, present the appearance of two 

 very brilliant hemispheres of burnished copper, sym- 

 metrically reticulated by the numerous facets of which 

 they are composed. Its eggs are deposited in small 

 patches on the leaves of living plants, and many who 

 have found them, without having any previous know- 

 ledge of the history of the fly, have very naturally 

 mistaken them for a species of minute fungus. They 

 are little elliptical bodies, elevated on very slender 

 white pedicles, each of which is about half-an-inch 

 long, and has its basal extremity planted in a minute 



