It is conceivable that, as we learn more about them, they may take a much more important place in public esteem, just as insectivorous birds are doing. Perhaps they will come to be protected and their breeding places guarded by the drainage engineers. [Illustration] THE DRAGON-FLY No dragon of legend could be more blood-thirsty or terrible than this. With four wings like the supporting planes of an aerodrome, it can fly as fast as a railway train. With thousands of eyes crowded together like cells in a honeycomb, forming eye masses that cover most of its head, it can see in all directions at once. With massive jaws and teeth as sharp as needle points, it can pierce and crush the strongest shell of its prey. With its long-jointed spiny legs held out in front like a basket, it rushes through the air, catches and devours its prey and lets the carcass fall to the ground, all without slackening its terrible speed. It is hard to realize, as you watch this swiftly moving dragon of the air, that it has spent the first stage of its life as a slowly crawling, ugly water monster lying in wait among the reeds and grasses for some unsuspecting water bug or larva to pass by. The female, as she skims the surface of some pool, drops into the water her clumps of dragon eggs, a thousand at a time, and from these are born the ugly water dragons, which, when come of age, grow wings and, crawling to the surface, split their old skins open, unfold and dry their closely packed wings, and dart away into the sunshine to prey upon the other creatures of the air. [Illustration] THE DRAGON-FLY AND ITS VICTIM (_Macromia sp._) Who would suspect, as one of these dragon-flies darts by him on the roadway, that every few minutes its jaws are crunching some helpless insect caught in its flight? When I caught the dragon-fly whose picture is shown here, I held him by the wings, and, catching a fly that buzzed about the table, dropped it in his claws. Without a moment's hesitation his mouth opened wide and closed upon the fly. I watched it disappear underneath his great upper lip and almost fancied I could hear its shell crack as the powerful jaws and lower lips turned it around and around in the mouth. A few seconds only, and the sucking throat had drawn out all the blood and the lips threw out a ball-like mass made up of the fly's wings, legs and crushed body skeleton. Then it opened again for more. One entomologist has said that in two hours a dragon-fly will eat at least forty house flies, and Doctor Howard says that if starved for food it will eat up its own body.