Beautiful as they are, they must be ranked among Nature's fiercest and most insatiable destroyers. They are the terror of the insect world. On this point we shall hereafter enlarge, but before I forget it, I would fain relate an anecdote, in illustration of their voracity, which I have read somewhere or other. A naturalist recounts with what interest he has often watched the proceedings of the dragon-fly. He has seen it, in a locality where white butterflies were numerous, dart down as a hawk upon a quarry, seize with its legs a firm hold of a butterfly, and carry it to a branch of an adjoining tree. In a moment one of the white wings would drop from the boughs, and then another would come wavering downwards, and so on, until all four had fallen; and the dragon-fly, after a short pause, would again dart forth in pursuit of a fresh victim. He never launched himself on his prey when on a perfect horizontal line with it; but took care to be either somewhat higher, or somewhat lower, so that he could seize it with his feet. But now let us consider by what characteristics the reader is to recognise his Libellulæ. The eyes are very large, the size of the insect considered; of a brown colour, and nearly joined together at the top of the head; in front of this point of junction a tiny vesicle is visible, carrying three _ocelli_ (_i.e._, little, simple, glossy eyes), two on each side, and the third on the anterior margin: the thorax is large, hairy, and composed of two yellow plates; the abdomen laterally depressed, in such a manner as to give great prominence to the medial line. This last and well-marked feature it is which has procured for the Eleanora the scientific name of _Libellula depressa_,--a name proposed by Linnæus, and unanimously adopted; such unanimity being a rare occurrence among naturalists, though, to parody a phrase of Sheridan's, when naturalists _do_ agree, it is something wonderful! In the male Libellulæ, the upper surface of the abdomen is bluish in hue, and covered as it were with an ashy dust, while in the female it is olive; in both sexes the first and last abdominal segment are of a deeper shade than the other segments. The feet are black, and bristle all over with stiff hairs; the thighs are of a brownish red. The two pairs of wings, each strongly reticulated, present, towards the extremity of the upper border, a black rectangular spot; their base, moreover, is edged with brown spots; the spots of the lower pair are triangular and larger than those of the upper pair, which are nearly linear. They form, to a certain extent, the reservoir of the liquid which nourishes and maintains the circulation of the network of the wings. The Libellula, which Geoffroy calls (in his "Histoire des Insectes") the _Philinta_, is simply the male of the species we have just been describing. You may see them "Where water-lilies mount their snowy buds," pursuing one another with an abrupt, jerking--I had almost said _staccato_--flight.