02 
NEUROPTERA. 
victims to the voracity of the hungry trout or other 
finny inhabitant of the rippling stream or lake (Fig. 1). 
The term Ephemera , so applicable to this creature of 
a day, is as old as the time of Aristotle, who speaks of 
certain insects which live and fly about till evening and 
die at sunset. The life of the May-fly is pre-eminently 
a short one, and though specimens have been kept alive 
for some days, the word correctly enough describes the 
shortness of its existence in its insect stage. Though 
these insects sometimes occur in England in enormous 
multitudes, the numbers are vastly exceeded in Switzer¬ 
land and other countries. I have somewhere read that 
these insects are so plentiful that they have been col¬ 
lected and used to feed pigs ! 
On Plate II., Fig. 5, the reader will see a drawing of 
the Lace-wing-fly (Clirysopa vulgaris ), a representation 
of the family of Hemerobiidcc. It is not easy to imagine 
anything more beautiful and delicate than the Lace¬ 
wing-fly, w T ith its eyes of burnished gold, its wide 
gauze-like wings, reflecting varying hues of pink or 
green, according to the incidence of the angle of light. 
The larvae of these insects are to be enumerated amongst 
the farmers’ friends, inasmuch as they are great de- 
vourers of the Aphides or Plant-lice. Very curious are 
the eggs of the Lace-wing-fly; they are laid in small 
bunches upon leaves. Each egg is supported at the end 
of a long thread or footstalk about half an inch long. 
The mode in which this insect deposits her eggs is as 
follows : she bends down her tail and presses it against 
a leaf, upon which she places a small drop of viscous 
matter secreted by herself, quickly she raises her tail 
and draws out a thread of this viscous matter, which 
