Definitions
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun A pseudoneuropterous insect of the family Perlidæ: so called because the larval forms abound under the stones of streams. (See cut under
Perla .) P. bicaudata, whose larva is much used by anglers, is an example.
Etymologies
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Examples
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When the stone-fly nymph is fully grown, it comes out of the water and climbs to some convenient eminence.
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An insect that is continually submerged and has no contact with the upper air cannot breathe through a series of paired spiracles, and during the aquatic life-period of the stone-fly these remain closed.
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The aquatic young of a stone-fly does not differ sufficiently in form from its parent to warrant us in calling it a larva; the life-history is like that of a cockroach, all the instars however except the final one -- the winged adult or _imago_ -- live in the water.
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The spiracles are now open, and the stone-fly breathes atmospheric air like other flying insects.
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But throughout its winged life, the stone-fly bears memorials of its aquatic past in the little withered vestiges of gills that can still be distinguished beneath the thorax.
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Except for the possession of tufted gills, adapting them to an aquatic life, the stone-fly nymphs differ but slightly from the adults; the grubs of the dragon-flies and may-flies, however, are markedly different from their parents.
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There was the _dun-fly_, for the month of March; and the _stone-fly_, much in vogue for April; and the
Tales and Novels — Volume 06 Maria Edgeworth 1808
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The third is the stone-fly, in April: the body is made of black wool; made yellow under the wings and under the tail, and so made with wings of the drake.
The Compleat Angler : or, The Contemplative Man`s Recreation 1653
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If this is the fact (and it is well worth ascertaining) they are rendering an essential service to the fisheries instead of injuring them, because these creepers (the larvae of the stone-fly, bank-fly, and all the drakes) are exceedingly destructive to spawning-beds, and as the Water Ouzel feeds on them at all other times, and as they are more abundant in the winter than at any other season, I think this is the more probable supposition.
Essays in Natural History and Agriculture Thomas Garnett 1838
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"creeper-fishing" is akin to this method, but the creeper is the larva of the stone-fly, not a fly itself, and it is cast more like an ordinary fly and allowed to sink.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 Various
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