42 CURIOSITIES OF ENTOMOLOGY. 



no food is taken to supply the waste, the muscles will not be 

 capable of long-sustained action." 



When they attain their final stage of metamorphosis and 

 perfect form, they are among the most fleeting of living 

 creatures, existing often for only a few hours, 'and propagating 

 their species before they die. In this state they sometimes 

 appear suddenly in myriads, during fine summer evenings, by 

 the water-side, where they may be seen flitting about and 

 balancing themselves in the air, in the manner of gadflies. 

 But the term Ephemera, so applicable to this creature of a 

 day, must not be understood in too restricted a sense. It is 

 quite true that numbers are devoured by fishes or birds before 

 their final change is effected, and that the survivors have but 

 a very brief existence. After the laying of the eggs, which, 

 however, may last more than a single day, the female 

 perishes, or dies a natural death. The only business of her 

 life being accomplished, she has now only to die. If, how- 

 ever, a specimen be caught, and kept in confinement, and the 

 laying be thus checked, an Ephemera may live several days. 

 Whether the males are as short-lived as the females, we can- 

 not say, but it is not improbable that they may survive some- 

 what longer, though, from the fact of their taking no food, it 

 is probable that the life of all the Ephemerce is very short. 



The figure on the left-hand blade of grass in the coloured 

 plate represents the female green-drake, which changes into the 

 grey-drake, seen resting on the right-hand blade, leaving her 

 cast-off pellicle upon the grass stem. The flying insect is the 

 perfect male. 



That the grey-drake is only the female green-drake meta- 

 morphosed, or rather after the last pellicle is cast, may be 

 sometimes readily proved by dissection. The marble and 

 white skin of the female grey-drake may be seen by carefully 

 slitting open or peeling off the first integument of the green- 

 drake. 



The expressions green and grey -drakes, as applied to the 

 May-flies by anglers, owe their origin to the fact that the 

 wings of the artificial fly are made from a mallard's feather, 

 dyed olive for the green-drake, or immature condition of the 



