When the scorpion fly, standing still, raises above its head that pair of pincers which forms its tail, it seems almost like some two-headed monstrosity. It is interesting to know that the great Aristotle knew these insects and thought of them as winged scorpions. It is only the males which have these curious tails. One might easily mistake the long snout for that of some sucking insect, but at the very tip there are two oblong, plate-shaped jaws, each armed with two very sharp teeth which enable the creature to live a carnivorous existence. Although little is yet known about it, the scorpion fly appears, like a hyena, to live chiefly on dead animal matter, although it has been seen to attack injured or helpless insects. [Illustration] A SOLDIER TERMITE (_Termes flavipes_, Koll.) Although too poor a photograph, perhaps, to be worthy of a place in this collection, I have a sentimental reason for its reproduction here, for it brings to mind the days I spent in Java lying flat on the ground studying the mushroom gardens of its tropical relatives. There are few more interesting creatures than these termites. They have been mushroom eaters and mushroom growers for thousands of years. They have their kings and queens, their workers and their soldiers, and they build gigantic caverns and tall mounds out of earth and half-digested wood. They tear to pieces and reduce to powder the dead trees of the tropical forests. Their nymphs, the young kings and queens, are winged and perform a marriage flight, then, tearing off their own wings, they settle down to form a home of dirt and start a new and numerous colony. They seem to be upon a higher plane of social life than are the true ants, with which they are not in any way related, for the members of a species seem all to be quite friendly towards each other even though they may come from widely different nests. This is never true of ants. Their queens are strange, egg-laying machines as large as a man's thumb, and they lay an egg a second for nobody knows how long. The workers shun the light and make long, covered ways of mud in which they go from place to place. With their untiring energy they honeycomb the building timbers of houses and ships in the tropics, making mere hollow shells of them, and so causing disasters of all kinds. Some of their soldiers have mandibles so strong and sharp as to drive away all animals and make them formidable enemies of man, and some have squirt guns in their heads with which they spray their enemies with an obnoxious fluid. This tiny representative is all we have in Maryland, but though so small and quiet in his habits he does great work among the pine stumps of my place. The stump of any pine that is felled one year can be kicked out the next, honeycombed with the chambered runways of this creature. Beware lest any pine timbers of your house are near the ground and become infested with termites. THE STINGING INSECTS (_Hymenoptera_)