In South America I was accustomed to see dragon-flies in rushing hordes and clouds, and in masses clinging like swarming bees to the trees; here we see them as single insects, but I once witnessed a beautiful effect produced by a large number of the common turquoise-blue dragon-fly gathered at one spot, and this was in Hampshire. I was walking, and after passing a night at a hamlet called Buckhorn Oak, in Alice Holt Forest, I went next morning, on a Sunday, to the nearest church at the small village of Rutledge. It was a very bright windy morning in June, and the oak woods had been stripped of their young foliage by myriads of caterpillars, so that {123} the sunlight fell untempered through the seemingly dead trees on the bracken that covered the ground below. Now, at one spot over an area of about half an acre, the bracken was covered with the common turquoise-blue dragon-fly, clinging to the fronds, their heads to the wind, their long bodies all pointing the same way. They were nowhere close together, but very evenly distributed, about three to six inches apart, and the sight of the numberless slips of gem-like blue sprinkled over the billowy, vivid green fern was a rare and exceedingly lovely one. After writing of the lovely haunters of the twilight, and that noblest one of all-- The great goblin moth who bears Between his wings the ruined eyes of death, and the angel butterfly, and the uncanny dragon-flies--the flying serpents in their splendour--it may seem a great descent to speak of such a thing as a glow-worm, that poor grub-like, wingless, dull-coloured crawler on the ground, as little attractive to the eye as the centipede, or earwig, or the wood-louse which it resembles. Nor is the glow-worm a southern species, since it is no more abundant in the warmest district of Hampshire than in many other parts of the country. Nevertheless, when treating of the Insect Notables of these parts, this species which we call a "worm" cannot be omitted, since it produces a loveliness surpassing that of all other kinds.