"As soon as they have arrived to their perfect state, the males seek out their mates, in order to propagate their species; for this purpose they frequent ponds and standing waters, places where the females generally harbour, and when the male in the course of his flight comes within a certain distance of her, if it be one of that species whose sexual parts {114}in both sexes are placed in the tail, he immediately flies to her, and fixing himself by his feet to the hinder part of her abdomen, bends his body round her tail, and performs the business of generation, both flying about all the time this act is performing; the whole transaction not exceeding the space of half a minute. Within a few hours after, the female, thus impregnated, begins to lay her eggs in the following manner. She singles out a leaf, grass, or some such matter, that is floating just below the surface of the water, in some pond, and, hovering in the air about a foot above this spot, on a sudden she descends, and dips the extremity of her tail in the water, at which instant she discharges an egg, that at the moment of its emission is inveloped in a glutinous liquid, sufficiently tenacious to enable it to adhere firmly on the floating substance above-mentioned without sinking. In this manner she continues depositing them till she has discharged the proper quantity, hovering in the air all the time, and emitting them as fast as the pendulum of a clock performs its vibrations; placing them close to one another in no regular or exact order. Whether she discharges at one time all her quantity of eggs, or only those that were fecundated and ready for emission, waiting to have the remaining eggs within her again fecundated by the male, or whether the first act of copulation sufficiently impregnates the whole quantity which she discharges at different times, as nature ripens them, is a circumstance I cannot determine. However this may be, it is certain she does not discharge them all at once; but comes again to the same place, when those within her are ready for emission, and there lays them in the same manner as at first.