The Insect Folk

by Margaret Warner Morley

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.

See, sticking out of the front of its head are two little feelers,

or antennæ, 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 antennæ belong to its head.

Of course our demoiselle can fly well; one need only look at those wings to know that.