means of its gills.

Yes, May, its gills are in its syringe, which seems very odd,--you see
the dragon fly larva breathes at its tail end instead of at its head
end.

Mollie thinks it is an upside-down, inside-out sort of a creature
anyway. But it knows what it is about.

Ned wants to know how it can get any air to breathe when it lives under
water.

The truth is, there is always air mixed in with water, and it is this
air the larva breathes when the water goes in and out of the syringe.

It uses the syringe for another purpose too. When it pleases it can
shoot out the water with great force, and thus propel itself quite a
distance.

By means of the syringe it can leap through the water faster than it can
move by its slow-going legs.

Mollie wants to know if we can see the syringe.

No, it is inside the body.

But there is a kind of dragon fly that has a pair of gills outside, at
the end of the abdomen, instead of the syringe inside.

The best I can do is to show you a picture of one. Some day we may find
it in the pond.

[Illustration]

Those two feather-like parts at the tail end are gills.

Yes, John, it can propel itself through the water by rowing, as it were,
with these gills.

There are some species of dragon fly larvae that swim by moving the tip
of the abdomen from side to side, as a fish moves its body when it
swims.

But now let us return to our funny larva that lives at the bottom of the
pond. It stays down there, eating and growing and moulting, for nine or
ten months or even longer; then something very wonderful happens.

It suddenly feels a great desire to get up to the top of the pond.

[Illustration]

It climbs up a weed or a stick until it is clear out of the water.

Then its skin splits down the back for the last time, and out there
pulls itself, not a larva, but a weak-looking dragon fly, with soft and
flabby little wings.

Now is its hour of danger, and now is the time for such birds as like
the taste of young dragon flies to help themselves.

Catbirds seem to have a special fondness for these helpless insects, and
have been known to eat them before the flabby little wings had grown
stiff.

If the birds do not find the newly emerged dragon fly, it remains
motionless an hour or so, but it does not remain unchanged.

Its wings stretch out and harden.

Bright metallic colors begin to play over them and over its body; and
all at once--off it darts, away and away, glitter