AUGUST 163 



as Professor Miall's Natural History of Aquatic Insects, 

 which will help him to understand what a marvellous 

 transaction the 'rise' really is, and what incredibly 

 complex and delicate changes are undergone by minute 

 organisms in passing from larva to imago. Most of 

 them can only be followed through the microscope, but 

 a simple pocket lens suffices to reveal many beauties 

 and more horrors. Yes, horrors; for most of these 

 gauzy fabrics are creatures of prey, armed with infinite 

 variety of murderous weapons, and leading lives of 

 ceaseless treachery, carnage, and rapine. The business 

 carried on beneath the glassy surface of the stream and 

 in the shining shallows of the pond is one of relent- 

 less cruelty. Tennyson, always a trustworthy guide to 

 nature, has dwelt on the beauty of some water-side 

 episodes : 



' To-day I saw the dragon-fly 

 Come from the wells where he did lie ; 

 An inner impulse rent the veil 

 Of his old husk ; from head to tail 

 Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 

 He dried his wings : like gauze they grew, 

 Through crofts and pastures wet with dew 

 A living flash of light he flew.' 



No description could be at once more faithful and more 

 poetic ; but what bard has dared to describe what went 

 before? Dragon-flies, unlike most insects hatched 

 under water, pass through no chrysalis or pupa stage. 

 The hideous larva creeps out of the ditch where it was 

 spawned, and is transfigured straightway into the 

 gorgeous fly; yet by help of a moderate lens even 



