200 SUMMER 



to batten on foul meat or rotten fruits, the race of moth and 

 butterfly live for the most part on the nectar of the flowers 

 which they rival in shape and colour, and the ethereal 

 semblance is maintained. But the dragon-fly is never anything 

 but a dragon. It 'grapples in the central blue,' as Tennyson 

 foretold of the aeroplanes ; it hawks and destroys, with a 

 power that is equal to its impetus of flight, and has all the 

 fierceness of the flesh-eater. 



It is, perhaps, alone in its fury. Nearly all insects are 

 insatiate eaters in the grub state. They resemble a biennial 

 plant, such as a carrot, which in its first year makes a great 

 store of food, that suffices for the plant in its second or 

 flowering time. The dragon-fly grub is a great devourer 

 while at the bottom of the pond, never descends into the 

 sleep of the chrysalis, and in his last state is if anything more 

 destructive than in his first. He is as he looks. The com- 

 monest dragon-flies, those most of us think of as the proper 

 presentment of a dragon-fly, is usually an ^schna or one of 

 the Libellulinse, which are big in structure, and coloured in 

 curious greens and yellows, with black lines that half suggest 

 a snake. The eyes are fairy-story eyes as big as saucers in 

 comparison with the head, which is all eyes and mouth. 

 They flaunt their aggressive colours, their war-flags ; and 

 yet just now and again they might be selected by some 

 zealot in protective coloration as a splendid example of his 

 thesis. In a certain Midland garden they used to love hang- 

 ing on the boughs of deodar, and to the scheme and colour 

 of it they fitted so perfectly that though you saw them pitch 

 you could scarcely find them. It is so too when they survive 

 beyond the summer. Often you may find a pair careering 

 madly about the hedges, and stopping at intervals on the 

 thorn boughs just losing their fresh green. It is odds that if 

 you did not see them alight you would pass within inches 



