The dragon-flies, being no man's hobby, are known only by the old generic English names of dragons, horse-stingers, adder-stingers, and devil's darning-needles. Adder-stinger is one of the commonest names in the New Forest, but it is often simply "adder." One day while walking with a friend on a common near Headley, we asked some boys if there were any adders there. "Oh yes," answered a little fellow, "you will see them by the stream flying up and down over the water." The name does not mean that dragon-flies sting adders, but that, like adders, they are venomous creatures. This very common and wide-spread notion of the insect's evil disposition and injuriousness is due to its shape and appearance--the great fixed eyes, bright and sinister, and the long, snake-like, plated or scaly body which, when the insect is seized, curls round in such a threatening manner. The colouring, too, may have contributed towards the evil reputation; at all events, one of our largest species had a remarkably serpent-like aspect due to its colour scheme--shining jet-black, banded and slashed with wasp-yellow. This is the magnificent _Cordulegaster annulatus_, little inferior to the _Anax imperator_ in size, and a very common species in the southern part of the New Forest in July. But how astonishing and almost incredible that this singular-looking, splendid, most dragon-like of the dragon-flies should have no English name! {122} [Sidenote: Calopteryx virgo] Something remains to be said of the one dragon-fly which has got a name, or names, although these do not appear to be known to the country people. Mr. W. T. Lucas, in his useful monograph on the British dragon-flies, writes enthusiastically of this species, _Calopteryx virgo_, that it is "the most resplendent of our dragon-flies, if not of all British insects." It is too great praise; nevertheless the _virgo_ is very beautiful and curious, the entire insect, wings included, being of an intense deep metallic blue, which glistens as if the insect had been newly dipped in its colour-bath. Unlike other dragon-flies, it flutters on the wing like a butterfly with a weak, uncertain flight, and, again like a butterfly, holds its blue wings erect when at rest. It is one of the commonest as well as the most conspicuous dragon-flies on the Boldre, the Dark Water, and other slow and marshy streams in the southern part of the Forest.