THE JULY PAGEANT. 83 
insect disengages itself and works its way out, having 
now wings and other organs like its parent of nearly a 
year before. In a few hours the wings become ex- 
panded and hardened, and the brilliant colors gradually 
become apparent. In Zhe Two Voices Tennyson gives 
us a picture of this scene. 
“To-day I saw the dragon-fly 
Come from the wells where he did lie. 
An inner impulse rent the veil 
Of his old husk: from head to tail 
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail. 
He dried his wings ; like gauze they grew ; 
Thro’ crofts and pastures wet with dew 
A flash of living light he flew.” 
During the single month of their matured life 
dragon-flies haunt the ponds and streams, preying on 
butterflies and moths and other insects. Sometimes we 
see them hovering over, or settling upon, the mud left 
by summer showers. They are classed with the insects 
beneficial to agriculture, because their chief mission is 
to destroy insects which feed on vegetable life. 
“There is but one butterfly,” says Scudder (Am. 
Nat., vol. X., 392), ‘(whose range is so extended as to 
merit the name of cosmopolitan; it is the Painted Lady 
or Vanessa Cardui, L. (Cynthia Cardui, Fab.). With 
the exception of the arctic regions and South America 
