AQUATIC INSECTS IN NEW YORK STATE 229 
able distance from water. They habitually rest among the 
stems of tall growing rushes and sedges, or flit from stem to 
stem in short, shadowy flights. Notwithstanding the brilliant 
- metallic colors of some species, they are by no means conspicu- 
ous in their native haunts; their greens and browns, and their 
slender bodies and transparent wings are lost against a back- 
ground of reeds and sedges. 
They feed extensively, perhaps chiefly, on such small gnats, 
mosquitos etc. as emerge from the water of their own native 
shallows, or such as rest in hiding during the daytime among 
the rushes. I have often seen a Lestes dart out and capture a 
gnat in flight, and then settle on a stem to devour it at leisure. 
The females (of two species at least, L. uncata and L. 
unguic ulat a) deposit their eggs in punctures made in the 
stems and leaves of plants above the water. For this purpose 
they utilize the leaves of bur reed or of any of the coarser sedges 
or grasses; or the flowering stems of the blue flag. The stems 
and leaves selected for oviposition, usually well exposed clumps 
here and there about the pools, are often filled full of eggs fora 
distance of a foot above the surface of the water. 
I have studied Lestes chiefly in the two species named above, 
which are common about my home in Lake Forest, occurring in 
shallow pools of the springtime, that dry out thoroughly every 
‘summer, and are usually refilled by the rains of late autumn. 
I have already published! some observations made there, on the 
destruction of the fruit of the blue flag by the puncturing of the 
fruit stalks by Lestes ovipositing. I will give here some addi- 
tional observations of facts more immediately concerning the 
insects themselves. 
In these pools, which are always dried out by midsummer, the 
eggs, deposited well above the water, develop normally from 
the first, and in the course of two or three weeks attain a 
condition which is apparently almost that in which they will 
hatch. Then they estivate through the remainder of the sum- 
mer and early autumn. Development stops apparently entirely, 
1American Naturalist, 34:374-75. 
