BEAUTIFUL DRAGONFLIES. 263 



branches to look in, I heard an anxious " phit," 

 and glanced up to see the owner alight on the 

 lowest limb of a peach-tree near by. Of course 

 I turned away at once, pretending that I was 

 just passing, and had no suspicion of her pre- 

 cious secret in the raspberries, and hoping that 

 she would not mind. But she did mind, very 

 seriously ; she continued to stand on that branch 

 with an aggrieved air, as if life were no longer 

 worth living, now that her home was perhaps 

 discovered. Without uttering a sound or mov- 

 ing a muscle, so far as I could see, she remained 

 for half an hour before she accepted my tak- 

 ing a distant seat and turning my attention to 

 dragonflies as an apology, and ventured to visit 

 her nest again. After that I made very sure 

 that she was engaged elsewhere before I paid 

 my daily call. 



The dragonflies, by the way, were well worth 

 looking at; indeed, they divided my interest 

 with the birds. So many and such variety I 

 never noticed elsewhere, and they acted exactly 

 like fly -catching birds, staying an hour at a 

 time on one perch, from which every now and 

 then they sallied out, sweeping the air and re- 

 turning to the perch they had left. Sometimes 

 I saw four or five of them at once, resting on 

 different dead twigs in the yard the other side 

 of the lawn, and I have even seen one knock 



