The Insect Folk. Margaret Warner Morley
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But over there, standing on the end of that stick, is another kind.
When it rests its wings are folded together.
What a pretty one it is! Do you see it?
It is small, but so pretty.
It is bright blue and shines as though it had been polished.
Sometimes birds catch these smaller dragon flies, though birds, as a rule, are not fond of any of them.
They are so hard and their wings are so stiff I should think a bird might almost as well swallow nails.
I am sure no bird could swallow one of the big ones, wings and all!
But frogs can.
A frog will try to swallow almost anything it can catch, and it watches for the dragon flies when they come to lay their eggs in the water.
Suddenly it jumps out, and away goes poor dragon fly into that great wide frog-mouth.
Now look at the legs of the dragon fly. It has six.
Every dragon fly has six legs.
They are rather short and small for so large an insect, but that is because it does not need large, strong legs.
You never saw a dragon fly dig a hole, or run, or even walk, did you?
Their legs are not arranged for walking. All six of them are directed forwards as though they were reaching out after something. And so they are—reaching out after insects.
Dragon fly catches his prey while he is flying, and he grasps the insects with his feet.
He snatches one, and then what?
Does he sit down somewhere and eat it?
Not he, he is far too hungry for that; he continues his swift flight, and as he flies he eats.
As soon as he has finished one fly or gnat, zip! he snatches another.
He has an insatiable appetite, consuming hundreds of insects in the course of a day. Nor does he confine his attention to flies and gnats and mosquitoes and such small fry. He catches what he can. A large dragon fly will even gorge himself on one of the large-sized butterflies, and one has been seen calmly chewing away at an enormous wasp!
No, indeed, Mabel, the dragon fly does not eat the wings of the butterfly, it eats only the soft body.
Probably nothing eats a butterfly, wings and all. Birds and insects sometimes catch butterflies, and you often see the bright wings lying on the ground. The wings of insects are not worth eating, and are almost always cast aside by the creatures that eat the insects.
Besides catching insects with their legs, the dragon flies cling fast to things with them, but when they wish to move they do not walk, they fly.
Yes, indeed, Frank, you are right; their legs are jointed.
That is so they can move them easily and fold them up when they want to.
They would find it as hard to get along without joints to their legs as we should.
Wouldn't we be stiff if we had no joints!
See, the legs and wings are fastened to the middle part of the body, the thorax, we call it.
All insects have the legs and wings attached to the thorax.
The rest of the body is the abdomen. See how long it is.
It is the long abdomen that gives the dragon fly its name of spindle, I suppose.
The abdomen is jointed, and it can curl up.
All grown-up insects have a head, a thorax, and a jointed abdomen.
What are you looking at, Charlie?
Something moving in the bottom of the pond?
Let us get it out.
Here, we will dip it out with this cup.
What a lot of stuff!
Sticks and mud—and—what is that?
Something alive, surely.
Let us put some clean water in the cup and examine what we have found.
My! my! what a queer little thing!
What do you suppose it is?
Ah, I know now, but I do not think you could ever, ever guess, not if you tried a week.
It is a young dragon fly!
It does not look much like its shiny-winged parents.
It looks like I don't know what, with a face like—well, when you look right in front of it, like a pug dog.
Queer! Well, I should think so! What is that, Amy? Am I sure it is a dragon fly?
Yes, there is no mistake; a dragon fly one day dropped an egg in the pond, and out of it hatched—this.
It will some day become a shiny-winged dragon fly and catch mosquitoes.
We will call it larva, and we will watch it a little while.
Look and see if it has a head, a thorax, and an abdomen.
Are there antennæ on its head? And has it eyes?
If you were to look at its eyes with a microscope, you would find that they are made of six-sided facets, like the eyes of the grown-up dragon fly.
They are compound eyes, but they are not as large as the eyes of the grown-up dragon fly.
How many legs has it? What are its legs fastened to?
Yes, Nellie, thorax is right.
Its six legs are fastened to its thorax. I am glad you remembered thorax.
Has it a jointed abdomen? and has it wings?
Look! did you see that?
It opened its innocent-looking face all of a sudden, just darted it out into a long-handled spoon, with hooks at the end, and hooked up that little grub.
Now it is holding the grub on the hooks in front of its mouth and eating it as greedily as if it were half starved.
So that is why its face looks so queer.
It is its long under lip all folded up in front like a mask that makes it look like a pug dog.
When it pleases it darts out that lip, and any unlucky insect or snail may fall a prey to its greedy appetite.
It is said that the larvæ of some dragon flies even eat pollywogs and small fishes.
Ned wants to know if "larvæ" means the same as "larva."
Yes, it is the plural form of the word. When we speak of only one we say "larva"; when we speak of more than one, instead of saying "larvas," we say "larvæ."
The dragon fly larvæ are terrible gluttons, and hidden under the mask are strong jaws for chewing up their prey.
Their legs are quite large and strong, too, for they crawl about the bottom of the pond or up the stalks of the plants.
They do not move about very fast, but they do shoot out that under lip very, very, very