344 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [12:8— Nov., 1916 



or "snake feeders"; while in England, where many species are 

 found, the country people call them "horse-stingers," believing 

 that they sting the horses, which is simply an empty slander. 

 No dragon-fly ever stung a horse in its life, any more than it 

 sewed up the ears of a bad boy, which many believe to have 

 happened. 



Dragon-flies are, without exception, aquatic in the early stages 

 of their existence, the larval stages being known as "nymphs." 

 Their history is extremely interesting, and they do not look one 

 bit like the adult insect. One may easily secure examples of them 

 for study in almost any good-sized pond in the country where 

 dragon-flies occur. Doctor Howard tells us that "The nymphal 

 dragon-flies are well adapted to aquarium study. They are easily 

 collected and easily kept. The debris at the bottom of ponds 

 can be brought up with a rake, and the nymphs thus collected 

 placed in a bucket and carried home to the aquarium, which 

 should be furnished with sand and aquatic plants. The best 

 time for collecting them is in the spring and summer." 



The entire group is known as the Odonata, and some 2000 of 

 them have been described, about 300 of which occur in this 

 country, though only 250 are peculiar to it. Sometimes upwards 

 of half this number of species may be collected in some particular 

 State, as nearly 100 occur in the insect fauna of Indiana alone. 



I might tell you a great deal more about dragon-flies, and I will be 

 glad to do so at some other time ; but just now I desire to invite your 

 attention to another insect, of which I captured quite a number the 

 day I took the big dragonfly shown on the wool-grass-top. I do 

 not refer to the fine male "Katydid" shown in the figure at the head 

 of this article, but to the five beautiful beetles seen on the blackberry 

 stem in the figure at the end . These I captured j ust as you see them 

 one summer's day in Maryland, on the shores of Chesapeake Bay, 

 about an hour and a half 's ride by rail from Washington. There were 

 several hundreds of them on the blackberry bushes along the road- 

 side, feeding upon the juices of the dead-ripe fruit. This beetle is 

 of a fine green color, rather dark, the elytra being smooth and as 

 hard as those of the Spotted I^elidnota (Pelidnota punctata), or 

 of the Goldsmith-Beetle (Cotalpa lanigera). It appears to be 

 related to the Bumble Flower-Beetle or Indian Cetonia {Euphoria 

 inda) ; but it is not described in Howard's Insect Book, or in any 

 other elementary work on entomology which I have casually 



