Page:Insect Literature by Lafcadio Hearn.djvu/220

Rh In a literal sense, Japan well deserves to be called the Land of the Dragon-fly; for, as Rein poetically declared, it is "a true Eldorado to the neuroptera-fancier.” Probably no other country of either temperate zone possesses so many kinds of dragon-flies; and I doubt whether even the tropics can produce any dragon-flies more curiously beautiful than some of the Japanese species. The most wonderful dragon-fly that I ever saw was a Japanese Calepteryx, which I captured last summer in Shidzuoka. It was what the country-folk call a "black dragon-fly"; but the color was really a rich deep purple. The long narrow wings, velvety purple, seemed—even to touch—like the petals of some marvellous flower. The purple body, slender as a darning-needle, was decorated with dotted lines of dead gold. The head and thorax were vivid gold-green; but the eyes were pure globes of burnished gold. The legs were fringed on the inner side with indescribably delicate spines, set at right angles to the limb, like the teeth of a fairy-comb. So exquisite was the creature that I felt a kind of remorse for having disturbed it,—felt as if I had been meddling with something 註