312 THE DRAGON-FLY. 
of this family are found in this country, and for descrip- 
tions of them we would refer the reader to Dr. Hagen’s 
Synopsis of the Neuroptera of North America, published 
by the Smithsonian Institution. 
The Libellulide, or family of Dragon-flies, and the 
Ephemerid, or May-flies, one of which is figured in our 
second number, are the most characteristic of the Neu- 
roptera, or veiny-winged insects.. This group is a most 
interesting one to the systematist, as it is composed of 
so many heterogeneous forms which it is almost impos- 
sible to classify in our rigid and at present necessarily 
artificial systems. We divide them into families and 
sub-families, genera and sub-genera, species and varie- 
ties, but there is an endless shifting of characters in these 
groups. The different groups would seem well limited 
after studying certain forms, when to the systematist’s 
sorrow here comes a creature, perhaps mimicking an ant, 
or aphis, or other sort of bug, or even a butterfly, and for 
wliich they would be readily mistaken by the uninitiated. 
Bibliographers have gone mad over books that could not 
be classified. Imagine the despair of an insect-hunter 
and entomophile, as he sits down to his box of dried neu- 
roptera. He seeks for a true neuropter in the white ant 
before him, but its very form and habits summons up 2 
swarm of true ants; and then the little wingless book- 
louse (Atropos) scampering irreverently over the musty 
pages of his Systema Nature, reminds him of that closest 
friend of man— Pediculus vestimenti. Again, his studies 
lead him to that gorgeous inhabitant of the Mediterranean 
shores, the butterfly-like Ascalaphus, with its gorgeous 
wings, and slender, knobbed antenne so much like those 
of butterflies, and visions of these beautiful insects fill his 
mind’s eye; or sundry dun-colored caddis flies, modest, 
