"I was having a walk around the garden, enjoying the cool evening after a blistering-hot day, and was about to retire indoors when I noticed a dragonfly nymph climbing a Bulrush at the edge of the pond, obviously with the intention of transforming into an adult. There were several cast skins – exuviae – on the Bulrush and, not having seen this nymph actually emerge from the water, I could sympathise with Thomas Muffet, the 16th-century entomologist and presumed father of the arachnophobic Miss, who believed that dragonflies were created from Bulrushes by spontaneous generation."