We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
June, 1922
295
Pond and Stream Life
Inland waters teem with creatures whose lives are as strange as a fairy tale. Many of these fascinating life stories we can read in motion pictures.
Dragon-flies begin life in the mud, as sprawling water-babies. Here, clinging to a reed, is the empty husk of what was once a "nymph." This drab gray armor has just been shed and a gauzy-winged dragon-fly has emerged.
Here is villainy in lovely form. As the dragon-fly zigzags over the pond, relentlessly pursuing midge and mosquito, its great jeweled eyes and rainbow-hued wings flash back the sunshine. It is a true child of the sun.
i' i
This is the nymph of the damsel-fly. Soon it will leave its haunts in the mud to crawl up a reed, where its nymphal skin will dry and split, freeing an exquisite insect with brilliantly colored body and iridescent wings.
Damsel-flies are smaller and less swift than their dragon-fly cousins. When at rest they fold their wings together over their backs, whereas the dragon-flies spread theirs as if to be ready for instant flight.
The ten-spot dragon-fly weaves its noisy, rapid, darting flight above the water. It is an inquisitive creature, with a mania for sitting on the end of one's Ashing pole. Dragon-flies are often called "mosquito hawks."
The cast nymphal skins of the may-flies float away on the water like pale ghosts. The may-fly is that gregarious insect you see in great clusters about the street lights in early summer.
The pond snail glues its gelatinous mass of eggs to submerged reeds and goes its way, leaving nature to do the rest. The picture shows the globules greatly enlarged; in reality they are no bigger than pinheads.
The horse-hair snake goes lashing its way through the water like a violently animated bit of thread. This particular "snake" (they are really parasitic worms) grew to maturity in the body of an unfortunate grasshopper.
The baby crawfish play close to mother and at the least alarm dart to her side and cling to her swimmerets. She curls her armor-plated tail around them, and zip ! they are whisked away to safety under a rock or a leaf.
The fat leech can stretch itself out into a thin band, like a ribbon, and swim gracefully through the water with swift, undulating movements. This is not the type of leech which old-fashioned doctors used for blood-letting.
This caddis-fly larva lumbers about the bottom of the pond, dragging its clumsy twig house after it. Other caddis-worms build houses of tiny scraps of shells, leaves, reeds or pebbles, held together by a tough silk.
The real villain of the pond is the ferocious water-tiger, larva of the predaceous water-beetle. It has all the sneaking, sinuous movements of the real tiger. Here you see it pursuing a frightened tadpole.
Produced and distributed by the Society for Visual Education, Inc.