26 THE AUSTRALIAN NATURALIST. 
panion or The Shell Collectors,’’ by John Mawe, London, 
1801 (price 5/-); (2) ‘‘Episodes of Insect Life, 1850.’’ Mr. 
Hamblin exhibited some galls from Currajong trees and the 
secretary, Mr. E. S. Edwards, several fossil Fenestedas and a 
Spirifer aricula from Permo-Carboniferus strata near Hobart, 
Tasmania. 
NOTES ON A LECTURE ON DRAGONFLIES. 
(By. R. J. Tillyard, M.A.) 
Tue lecturer first proceeded to speak of popular misconcep- 
tions in regard to the Dragonfly. In Australia it is known 
as the “‘Horse-stinger’? and in the United States as the 
“Devil’s Darning Needle.’? When Mr. Tillyard was col- 
Jecting in North Queensland, he found that the Dragonfly 
had a reputation bad enough to justify its extermination; he _ 
was assured that it had killed a couple of horses and one man 
even put down the illness of his wife to its agency. Yet it 
ossesses no sting and is absolutely harmless to man or beast. 
n a small way it is the friend of man, as it destroys large 
quantities of mosquitoes and their larvae, in fact, it can be 
fed from infancy to old age on these pests. The Dragonfly, 
however, is not common enough to extirpate them, but cer- 
tainly aids in keeping them down. 
The Dragonfly belongs to the order Neuroptera or nerve- 
winged insects, an order to which very little attention has 
been directed. One-is struck with the smallness of the 
groups in this order in comparison with some of the others 
such as the Coleoptera for instance; but these small groups: 
are survivors of groups of insects which at one time existed in 
Jarge numbers. At a remote period of time Dragonflies could 
be found over the whole world from Pole to Pole, but like 
all insects they were most numerous in tropical countries. 
In the coal measures of France fossilized remains of insects 
have been positively identified by an eminent French scien- 
tist as pre-historic. ‘These existed before the advent of birds 
and lizards. When, in the course of evolution, Nature formed 
the latter, the large Dragonflies, which were insects of rather 
weak flight, were quickly attacked and almost exterminated. 
Our present-day Dragonflies have, therefore, been evolved in 
two directions, both-of which gavé them the necessary power 
to escape their new foes:—(1) Small weak species that fly 
little, and rely on concealment (‘‘damsel flies’) and (2) larger 
species of excessively strong and rapid flight. The perfect 
wings of the latter kinds were obtained by conserving the 
wing material and. distributing it to the best advantage. 
