MOSQUITOES, SILKirORMS, AND DRAGON-FLIES 21 



may be reared in the schoolroom or at home if the proper 

 food is known and can be obtained. While some of them 

 will eat almost any kind of leaves most of them feed only 

 on one or two particular kinds. Whatever plant the 

 caterpillar selects outdoors is the kind of food plant it 

 prefers or must have. 



Directions for making breeding-cages for caterpillars 

 are given on p. 330; so that any caterpillar found may 

 be brought home alive and an attempt made to rear from 

 it the moth or butterfly of which it is only a young stage. 



Excellent books about the life of butterflies and moths 

 are "Moths and Butterflies," by Mary C. Dickerson, 

 " Every-day Butterflies," by S. H. Scudder, and " Cater- 

 pillars and Their Moths," by Ida Eliot and Caroline 

 Soule. 



• DRAGON-FLIES 



The adults. — Dragon-flies (fig. 1 1), or " devil's darning- 

 needles," are familiar insects in any locality not wholly 

 without ponds or streams. These long, slender-bodied, 

 swiftly flying insects are to be seen any bright day from 

 early spring to late autumn darting hither and thither over 

 a pond or along a stream bank. They are usually bril- 

 liantly colored with blue or green or red, and the wings 

 are often strongly marked with blackish bars or blotches. 

 When they thus dart swiftly about they are capturing 

 and devouring their prey— the little gnats and midges 

 which dance in the air over the pond or near its shores. 

 Dragon-flies are the hawks of the insect world. 



If one of these swift flyers can be caught in an insect 

 net it may be taken out and handled without fear, for 

 despite popular prejudice it is wholly harmless to any- 

 thing except small insects ; these it catches in its wide 

 mouth and crushes with its strong jaws. But it has no 

 sting, nor any piercing beak or poisonous jaws. Note the 



