53 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



house, sometimes at the top and sometimes at the bottom of the 

 glass ; and it was then that I discovered the wonder of the tiny 

 creature's eyes, the alertness of his intelligence, the extraordinary 

 flexibility of the minute joint upon which the head is made to 

 turn. He was not at all alarmed by the dangling black button, 

 which he evidently mistook for a particularly choice dinner ; but 

 he was plainly puzzled, and finally distressed, by his inability to 

 attain possession of this alluring dainty, seemingly within his 

 very grasp. 



So long as the button was in his sight, his whole being was 

 absorbed in the effort to possess it ; but, that object removed from 

 his vision, he made the surface of the glass his study, feeling it 

 with his thread-like tongue, and stretching out his anterior, rap- 

 torial feet, with an evident air of inquiry, along the transparent 

 walls that shut him in so incomprehensibly. 



Of course, the captive could not long remain in such a prison, and 

 at this juncture a small boy came to the rescue. When the devil's- 

 riding-horse is a subject of study, the small boy is an invaluable 

 coadjutor ; he quickly becomes expert as a purveyor of delicacies 

 in the shape of living insects, for dead ones the dainty mantis 

 will not deign to accept. The small boy, in this instance, perceiv- 

 ing at once the value of my captive, and the inadequacy of his 

 lodging, forthwith provided a discarded fly-trap of wire gauze, 

 cylindrical in form, six inches in diameter, and about nine inches 

 in height, surmounted by a top of tin. The lack of a fixed floor- 

 ing was supplied by a bit of cardboard. 



The deviPs-riding-horse was manifestly pleased with his trans- 

 ference to his more spacious abode, and he looked about him with 

 a very comical air of studious observation. The wire gauze 

 offered no more obstacle to his locomotion than did the glass, but 

 he was plainly puzzled over the difference between the walls of 

 this prison-house and those of the one he had left : for a little 

 while he seemed to be weighing the problem intently, putting out 

 a cautious claw for inquiry, and turning his head with an expres- 

 sion of deep attention from side to side, and pausing every now 

 and then, in his upward course, to examine this strange new sur- 

 face. 



The first meal we offered our fantastic guest was a dead fly, 

 but this he disdained in any way to notice ; though he was re- 

 peatedly shaken to the bottom of the cage where the dead fly lay, 

 he refused even to see it. Thereafter our fastidious captive had 

 his meals served to him au nature!. The living fly was simply 

 turned loose in the cage, and instantly the deviPs-riding-horse 

 was on the alert : warily he crept up the sides of the cage, settled 

 himself in a position to spring, and then the fly would move, and 

 the slow, laborious work of creeping upon his prey had all to be 



