s flying, and he grasps the
insects with his feet.

He snatches one, and then what?

Does he sit down somewhere and eat it?

Not he, he is far too hungry for that; he continues his swift flight,
and as he flies he eats.

As soon as he has finished one fly or gnat, zip! he snatches another.

He has an insatiable appetite, consuming hundreds of insects in the
course of a day. Nor does he confine his attention to flies and gnats
and mosquitoes and such small fry. He catches what he can. A large
dragon fly will even gorge himself on one of the large-sized
butterflies, and one has been seen calmly chewing away at an enormous
wasp!

No, indeed, Mabel, the dragon fly does not eat the wings of the
butterfly, it eats only the soft body.

Probably nothing eats a butterfly, wings and all. Birds and insects
sometimes catch butterflies, and you often see the bright wings lying on
the ground. The wings of insects are not worth eating, and are almost
always cast aside by the creatures that eat the insects.

Besides catching insects with their legs, the dragon flies cling fast to
things with them, but when they wish to move they do not walk, they fly.

Yes, indeed, Frank, you are right; their legs are jointed.

That is so they can move them easily and fold them up when they want
to.

They would find it as hard to get along without joints to their legs as
we should.

Wouldn't we be stiff if we had no joints!

See, the legs and wings are fastened to the middle part of the body, the
_thorax_, we call it.

All insects have the legs and wings attached to the thorax.

The rest of the body is the abdomen. See how long it is.

[Illustration]

It is the long abdomen that gives the dragon fly its name of spindle, I
suppose.

The abdomen is jointed, and it can curl up.

All grown-up insects have a head, a thorax, and a jointed abdomen.

* * * * *

What are you looking at, Charlie?

Something moving in the bottom of the pond?

Let us get it out.

Here, we will dip it out with this cup.

What a lot of stuff!

Sticks and mud--and--what is that?

Something alive, surely.

Let us put some clean water in the cup and examine what we have found.

My! my! what a queer little thing!

What do you suppose it is?

Ah, I know now, but I do not think you could ever, ever guess, not if
you tried a week.

It is a young dragon fly!

It does not look much like its shiny-winged parents.