INSECT SUCKERS AND BITERS. 219 
but, with the exception of the earwig, the creatures 
employing them belong to other countries than ours, 
and we cannot dwell upon them, for we must turn to 
another group, the " nerve- winged insects," ~' r which we 
meet with every day, and whose history is perhaps one 
of the strangest among insects. 
In the time of those ancient coal-forests of which we 
have spoken, when the grasshoppers and cockroaches 
lived upon the land, another race of insects, belonging 
half to the water and half to the air, were spending 
their youth in the ponds and marshes, and hovering 
over them in their riper age. These were the ances- 
tors of our May-flies and dragon-flies, and from that 
day to this they have kept up this strange existence, 
hunting and chasing their prey at the bottom of 
ponds until the time comes for their wings to grow, 
and then climbing up the water-plants, and bursting 
forth into glorious winged animals, which 
" To the sun their insect wings unfold, 
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of gold ; 
Transparent forms too fine for mortal sight, 
Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light." 
Every one who has been on a warm summer's day 
near the borders of a lake or pond, must have seen 
those delicate and fragile flies called May-flies (mf, 
Fig. 75), which dance in the sunshine, flag as the sun 
goes down, and die in the night. They are not difficult 
to know with their widespread unequal wings, their 
short delicate antennae, and their bodies ending in 
three long fine bristles ; and they do nothing but rise 
* Called Neuroptera or " Nerve- winged," on account of the net- 
work of veins in the wings. 
