1 86 ONLY A LARVA. 



( 



and mouth, and that their inner edges, where they meet, are 



cut into numerous short teeth, or spines, or armed with one 

 or more sharp claws ; you will then have as accurate an idea 

 as any powers of description can give you of the strange con- 

 formation of the under-lip of the larva of those insects, which 

 conceals the mouth and face precisely as I have supposed a 

 similar construction of your lip would do yours. When at 

 rest, this mask applies closely to and covers the face ; when 

 they would make use of it, they unfold it like an arm, catch 

 the prey at which they aim by means of the mandibuliform 

 plates, and then partly refold it, so as to hold the prey to the 

 mouth in the most convenient position for the operation of 

 the two pairs of jaws with which they are provided." 



And so the creature I have been examining is only a larva ! 

 How strange to compare it, thick, ugly, unwieldy, with the 

 insect that issues from it, so aerial, so graceful, so light, so 

 beautiful! The more I think of the contrast, the more it 

 interests me. 



This larva, however, has all the characteristics of a perfect 

 insect, and I will wager that more than one observer has 

 described it as such, and classified it among aquatic insects. 

 Yet it is but a larva ! And each species has its own special 

 larva (see Figs. 40 aixd 42). 



This seems to me as difficult to believe as if you told me 

 that John, James, Peter, in fact, all men, were only tem- 

 porary bodies from which more perfect beings would one day 

 emerge. For the medium in which these masked creatures 

 live, the troubled and muddy medium for which they are 



