128 ON A DRAGON FLY. 



Most of the names of this genus imply a malignant power which 

 is not inapt, and as I had my quirk last time at nomenclature 

 I should not wish any scientist to arch his eyebrow again at me. I 

 hope I regard all true science as the light of life and its laws. 



It is more than half a score years since my spare time and walks 

 were given to observing in this district, but as I pass through it by 

 train or tram I can see from the windows many of the old haunts of 

 hydra and ento;coa, insect and fish, that I am sure woiald well repay 

 the visit of naturalists any fine day in summer. 



Mr. M'Lennan, in his work on primitive marriage by theft or force, 

 traces the ceremonies and modes of seizure among the early traditions 

 of nearly every race. I fancy, liowever, he cannot well begin or stop 

 at primitive man or even vertebrates, but may carry the traces far 

 beyond all record, and spell out an exemplification of early wife capture 

 in the habits of the Dragon-fly. 



Haeckel, Spencer, Darwin, Sir John Lubbock, Grant Allen, and 

 others try to show us by means of Biology, that every animal has been 

 slowly moulded through a wonderful series of metamorphoses into its 

 existing shape by surrounding conditions, and that each bears in its 

 parts or form the traces, when we can read them, of its development 

 or evolution, and that mankind, step by step, sums up into himself, 

 more or less, along an endless line of ancestors, all the antecedent life of 

 a small trifle of eons of old times. 



We may ask ourselves what kind of life has each race of man for 

 the most part summed up into itself, and how much of the Dragon, for 

 instance, has evolved or devolved for each of us. The manners, habits, 

 and customs of a race, it has l)3en suggested, are the key to this 

 specialisation, and that running through the forms of lower life 

 preserved to us we see the vestiges of all the earlier stages and changes. 



If you then will throw your fancy into the scene among the Dragon- 

 flies you may not be mistaken in finding many of the phases of wife 

 capture after the old order of things brought down to our own days, as 

 M'Lennan describes them. 



Happily, with us, sweethearting has evolved from might into 

 manners, from capture into courtesy, as Coventry Patmoro depicts 

 in the '-Angel in the House": — 



" Lo ! how the woman once was woo'd — ■ 



Forth leapt the savage from his lair 

 And felled her I And to nuptials rude 



He dragged her, bleeding, by the hair. 

 From that to Chloe's dainty wiles 



And Portia's dignified consent — 

 What distance ! But these Pagan styles, 



How far below Time's fair intent. 



Shall love where last I left hiin halt ? 



Nay ; none can fancy or foresee 

 To how strange bliss may time exalt 



This nursling of civility." 



