DRAGON-FLIES 129 



yet which alive pleases the eye more than the splendid 

 and larger kinds solely because of its peculiarly graceful 

 flight. It never flutters, and as it sweeps airily hither 

 and thither, now high as the tree-tops, now close to the 

 earth in the sunny glades and open brarnbly places in 

 the oak woods, with an occasional stroke of the swift- 

 gliding wings, it gives you the idea of a smaller, swifter 

 more graceful swallow, and sometimes of a curiously- 

 marked, pretty dragon-fly. 



When we think of the bright colours of insects, the 

 dragon-flies usually come next to butterflies in the mind, 

 and here in the warmer, well- watered parts of the Forest 

 they are in great force. The noble Anax imperator is 

 not uncommon; but though so great, exceeding all 

 other species in size, and so splendid in his "clear 

 plates of sapphire mail," with great blue eyes, he is 

 surpassed in beauty by a much smaller kind, the 

 Libellula virgo alis erectus coloratis of Linnaeus, now 

 called Calopteryx virgo. And just as the great im- 

 perator is exceeded in beauty by the small virgo, so is 

 he surpassed in that other chief characteristic of all 

 dragon-flies to the unscientific or natural mind, their 

 uncanniness, by another quite common species, a very 

 little less than the imperator in size the Cordulegaster 

 annulatus. 



These names are a burden, and a few words must 

 be said on this point lest the reader should imagine 

 that he has cause to be offended with me personally. 



Is it not amazing that these familar, large, showy, 



