THE MONSTERS OF OUR BACK \ARUS 



597 



wings into motion and fly away with the 

 whirr of a miniature aerodrome. Indeed, 

 it was this resemblance which caused the 

 members of the aerial experiment asso- 

 ciation to name one of their tirst aero- 

 dromes after it. and the first trophy ever 

 given for an aerodrome flight was won 

 by Curtiss" "June Bug." 



This creature's first life is spent be- 

 neath the sod of your lawn, where it 

 curls up around the roots of the grasses 

 and clover and other plants which you 

 do not want it to eat, and the first year 

 of its subterranean existence it is the 

 white grub, with the brown head, which 

 everybody knows. At the end of the 

 second summer of its life it changes to 

 a soft brown beetle, which throughout 

 the winter is hardening its shell prepara- 

 tory to coming out in late spring as a 

 winged creature to feed upon the leaves 

 of trees. The beetle which is walking 

 toward you lives upon the oak. 



THE DRAGOX FLY ( PAGE 593) 



No dragon of legend could be more 

 bloodthirsty or terrible than this. With 

 four wings like the supporting planes of 

 an aerodrome, it can fly as fast as a rail- 

 way train. With thousands of eyes 

 crowded together like cells in a honey- 

 comb, forming eye masses that cover 

 most of its head, it can see in all direc- 

 tions at once. With massive jaws and 

 teeth as sharp as needle points, it can 

 pierce and crush the strongest shell of 

 its prey. With its long- jointed spiny 

 legs held out in front like a basket, it 

 rushes through the air, catches and de- 

 vours its prey and lets the carcass fall 

 to the ground, all without slackening its 

 terrible speed. 



It is hard to realize, as you watch this 

 swiftly moving dragon of the air, that it 

 has spent the first stage of its life as a 

 slowly crawling ugly water monster, ly- 

 ing in wait among the reeds and grasses 

 for some unsuspecting water fly or larva 

 to pass by. 



The female, as she skims the surface 

 of some pool, drops into the water her 

 clumps of dragon eggs, a thousand at a 

 time, and from these are born the ugly 

 water-dragons which, when come of age, 

 grow wings and, crawling to the sur- 



face, split their old skins open, unfold 

 and dry their closely packed wings, and 

 dart away into the sunshine to prey 

 upon the other creatures of the air. 



ONE OK THE BEE-FLIES (SparnopoHus 

 brcvirostris), p.vge 594 



No butterfly or any other creature of 

 the air could be more beautiful than this 

 dream of early summer. Its black velvet 

 body, into which the sunlight sank and 

 disappeared; its fringe of golden hairs 

 along the sides; its steel gray, myriad- 

 facet eyes, of which its head was made, 

 and its delicately formed wings, so thin 

 that the light in passing through them 

 was refracted into rainbow tints, made 

 it seem to me more beautiful than almost 

 any of those gorgeous forms of insect 

 life which sometimes fill the clearings in 

 Brazilian forests. 



It does seem strange that such a thing 

 as this should live its other life a para- 

 sitic grub, within the larva of some cater- 

 pillar or in the egg-case of some grass- 

 hopper ; but so it seems to do. It spends 

 its childhood as a disease and its mating 

 days as a dainty fly among the nectar- 

 bearing flowers. 



OXE OF THE AXOPHELES MOSQUITOS {AtW- 



pJieles punctipennis), page 596 



The malarial mosquito, so called, has 

 spotted wings, but otherwise it looks 

 quite like this harmless form from ]\Iary- 

 land. This whole tribe of Anopheles dif- 

 fers from the Culex in the length of its 

 mouth feelers, which project from the 

 base of the proboscis and appear in the 

 photograph almost as long as the pro- 

 boscis itself, whereas in a photograph of 

 the Culex it would appear so short as to 

 seem merely a thickening of the base of 

 the proboscis. 



The wildest fancy of the .Arabian 

 story-teller is lacking in imagination 

 compared with the story which the facts 

 of modern science have woven about 

 these liny representatives of the flv 

 family. 



\\^ho could imagine that just because 

 the lady mosquitos. tiring of their usual 

 meal of ripe bananas and plant juices, 

 acquired the habit of sucking blood. va.st 

 regions should be devastated and beings 



