The Insect Folk | Page 2

not like ours.
No, indeed!
Each of your big eyes is made up of a great many small eyes packed close together.
Do you know, children, that some of the largest of the dragon flies have as many as twenty thousand facets, or small eyes, in each large eye?
Think of it! Forty thousand eyes in one little dragon fly head. It ought to see well.
These facets are six-sided, excepting those along the edge, which are rounded on the outside. You cannot see their real shape without a microscope, they are so small. But here is a picture of some facets as they look under the microscope.
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Eyes like these, made up of many facets, we call compound eyes.
All grown-up insects have compound eyes, though not many have as large ones as the dragon fly.
Only insects that chase other insects or that need to see in the dark have very large eyes.
See what a big mouth the dragon fly has. Its jaws do not show unless it opens its lower lip, which fits over its mouth like a mask.
I should not care to have it bite my finger.
It could not hurt very much, and its bite is not poisonous, still I shall handle it carefully.
Some call the dragon fly a darning needle, and say it sews up people's ears when they lie on the grass. This is not true. It does not sew up anything. It has nothing to sew with.
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Why should it want to sew up people's ears, anyway?
It does nothing unpleasant but bite fingers, and it never goes out of its way to do that.
If we let it alone, it always lets us alone.
It is our good friend because it catches mosquitoes. For this reason it is sometimes called mosquito hawk.
We should never kill a dragon fly.
Sometimes it is called a spindle, I suppose because it is long and slender like a spindle.
Down South the colored people believe the dragon fly brings dead snakes to life, and they call it snake doctor.
In some places it is called snake feeder.
But it has nothing to do with snakes, dead or alive.
The French have given it a pretty name, demoiselle, or damsel fly, and that is quite deserved, for the dragon fly is a graceful little creature, as pretty as pretty can be.
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See, sticking out of the front of its head are two little feelers, or antenn?, as we must call them.
They are very short, but it does not need long ones.
Insects smell with their feelers, you know, but our dragon flies see so well they do not need to smell very well, I suppose.
See how it can turn its head around. That is because it has a little short neck between its head and its body.
Its eyes, its mouth, and its antenn? belong to its head.
Of course our demoiselle can fly well; one need only look at those wings to know that.
To fly well is quite as necessary to one of its habits as to see well.
What would be the use of seeing an insect if it could not fly fast enough to catch it?
We all like your pretty wings, little dragon fly; they look like glass and they shine so in the sun.
How fast the wings can move! See that dragon fly skimming over the pond; its wings make a whizzing sound as it darts about.
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Why does it zigzag so?
Why doesn't it fly in a straight line?
Yes, Mollie, you are right, it goes zigzagging along after insects.
It sees one it wants off at one side--whizz! around it turns after it.
Shouldn't you like to fly like that, children?
And yet we would not be willing to exchange our arms and hands for wings.
We could not whittle a stick nor write a letter if we had only wings.
In fact we could not do most of the things we now do.
I am glad I have my hands.
We are glad, too, that the dragon flies have their pretty, swift wings.
They have four wings, all nearly the same size and shape, you see, and they are all stiff and shining.
Some dragon flies, like this one we have picked up, always keep their wings spread out.
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But over there, standing on the end of that stick, is another kind.
When it rests its wings are folded together.
What a pretty one it is! Do you see it?
It is small, but so pretty.
It is bright blue and shines as though it had been polished.
Sometimes birds catch these smaller dragon flies, though birds, as a rule, are not fond of any of them.
They are so hard and their wings are so stiff I should think a bird might almost as well swallow nails.
I am sure no bird could swallow one of the big ones, wings and all!
But frogs can.
A frog will try to swallow almost anything it can catch, and it watches for the dragon flies