628 THE DRAGON-FLIES. 



dimensious, her abdomen begins to swell in the most preposterous 

 manner, until it is as long as a man's finger and about twice its 

 thickness, thus precluding its owner from advancing a single step. 



The queen, thus developed and for ever fixed in her home, is truly 

 the mother of her subjects, producing nearly eighty thousand eggs in 

 each twenty-four hours. The eggs are carried off by the workers as 

 soon as laid, and conveyed to suitable places in the nest, where they 

 are guarded until they are hatched, and are then fed and watched 

 until they have passed through their preliminary stages of exist- 

 ence. 



The great bulk of a Termite establishment is composed of workers, 

 who outnumber the soldiers in the proportion of a hundred to one. By 

 the mysterious instinct which is implanted in these insects the soldiers 

 and workers confine themselves to their respective occupations, the for- 

 mer doing nothing but fight and the latter nothing but labor. 



There are many species of Termite, and all are fearfully destruc- 

 tive, being, indeed, the greatest pests of the country wherein they re- 

 side. Nothing, unless cased in metal, can resist their jaws, and they 

 have been known to destroy the whole woodwork of a house in a single 

 season. They always work in darkness, and at all exj^enditure of eflbrt 

 keep themselves under cover, so that their destructive labors are often 

 completed before the least intimation has been given. For example, 

 the Termites will bore through the boards of a floor, drive their tun- 

 nels up the legs of the tables or chairs, consume everything but a mere 

 shell no thicker than paper, and yet leave everything apparently in a 

 perfect condition. Many a person has learned the real state of his fur- 

 niture only by finding a chair crumble into dust as he sat upon it, or a 

 whole staircase fall to pieces as soon as a foot was set upon it. In some 

 cases the Termite lines its galleries with clay, which soon becomes as 

 hard as stone, and thereby produces very remarkable architectural 

 changes. For example, it has been found that a row of wooden col- 

 umns in front of a house have been converted into stone pillars by these 

 insects. 



Passing by several families of the Neuroptera, we come to the Libel- 

 lulidse, or Dragon-flies. These insects are very familiar to us by means 

 of the numerous Dragon-flies which haunt our river-sides, and which 

 are known to the rustics by the very inappropriate name of Horse= 

 stingers, they possessing no sting and never meddling with horses. 

 The name of Dragon-flies, on the contrary, is perfectly appropriate, 

 as these insects are indeed the dragons of the air, far more voracious 

 and active than even the fabled dragons of antiquity. 



Even in their preliminary stages the Dragon-flies preserve their pred- 

 atory habits, and for that purpose are armed in a most remarkable man- 

 ner. Durmg the larval and pupal states the Dragon-fly is an inhabit- 



