THE ANT-LION 265 



you, its wings extended to the utmost. Your hand 

 darts out to seize it. Good-bye, darning-needle ! It 

 is ten paces away from you. ' ' 



"Yes, indeed," replied Louis, "every one has 

 chased darning-needles, but I never knew of any 

 one's catching them. And we don't have to go so 

 far as the brook or the mill-pond to find them, 

 either. ' ' 



"No; not all of them are lovers of water. Some, 

 in fact, avoid it and prefer sandy places parched by 

 the burning sun. A modest gray is their uniform, 

 but they make up for their lack of brilliancy by their 

 curious mode of life while they are still in the larva 

 form. The picture that I show you here illustrates 

 what these gray dragon-flies look like at an earlier 

 > stage. 



"A singular creature and not exactly ingratiating 

 in appearance. It would not be very pleasant to en- 

 counter one in a lonely nook in the woods, little 

 adapted though its size is for attacking us. Look 

 at its ferocious pointed 

 nippers, opening and 

 closing like a pair 

 of tweezers. Do they 

 not betoken a thirst Ant-iion 



for blood? As a matter of fact, the little creature 

 lives by carnage exclusively; it is a hunter whose 

 game is the ant. Hence its name of ant-lion, or, as 

 it might be put, the lion of the ants. 



"Prey of that sort is incapable of serious resist- 

 ance when once it has been seized by those terrible 



