LARVA AND DRAGON-FLY. 275 



image reflected, with your own fair forms, upon the surface of 

 the liquid mirror at your feet ! But little will your feathered 

 wings avail you when matched in flight against his bare and 

 nervous pinions. Whether you await or endeavour to escape 

 him whether at rest or in the air he will pounce upon you, 

 tear off, without mercy, your painted pinions ; and, when re- 

 duced to a disfigured mutilated trunk, bear you off in triumph 

 to the first convenient resting-place some bough or paling 

 there to glut his maw upon your honeyed juices, while repose 

 gives him new vigour for the pursuit and massacre of others 

 of your race ! 



Such is the dragon-fly in his form of maturity; and, even 

 in his earliest stage that of a crawling, wingless grub, gro- 

 ping in the mire, or swimming through the water of the pond 

 over which he subsequently soars, he exhibits the same savage 

 propensities, only modified by form and situation. He is, in 

 short, " a murderer from the beginning," distinguished for re- 

 markable rapacity, with endowments yet more remarkable for 

 its gratification. These we have already noticed under the 

 head of " water devils," amongst which, while a grub or larva, 

 the dragon-fly figures as a very Beelzebub. In the present 

 month (August), and on to October, the large green dragon- 

 fly* is commonly seen on the wing, in sunshine, near streams 

 and hedges, or found resting, of an evening, on water-plants 

 or low bushes. 



* Figured with its puparium in the Vignette to " COMING GOT." 



VOL. II. 17. 



