Zooloyy.-} NATURAL HISTORY OF VICTORIA. {Insects. 



and with smaller, raptorial anterior leg's than the female; prothorax similarly keeled, 

 but the anterior portion in front of leg's less distinctly granular; elytra and wings 

 extending nearly to end of abdomen ; articulated styles as in female, but, in addition, 

 2 very small inarticulate styles at end of last segment below, ^ line long, and 2 

 hooked processes two-thirds of a line long in middle. Color: All brown on body, 

 legs, and anterior margin of elytra and wings, the hinder portions of wings and 

 elytra equally colorless and transparent, a large oval patch on the under-side of 

 anterior base of elytra of the color and lustre of pitch, as in the female, slightly 

 showing through the brown of the upper side ; in many specimens two small black 

 spots on elytra close below the strong vein bounding the anterior margin, at about the 

 width of the elytra from their base, the second smaller one about the same distance 

 farther towards tip (the outer, or sometimes both these, spots absent). Length, 3 ins. 

 6 lines; width of head and eyes, t £q; length of antennce, fg$; length of prothorax, 

 T 3 o 3 T ; articulated styles, i\%; length of coxae of anterior raptorial legs, -j 1 ^- ; width, 

 T ^y ; femur, y 1 ^ ; length of elytra, fifo ; width, T y^ ; width of front margin at 

 middle, yf-^ ; length of wing, T 5 ^; width, y^V > width of colored front margin at 

 middle, T fo. 



Reference. — Audinet Serville Hist. Nat. des Insect. Orthop., p. 179. 



In all the species of Mantis the males have the body longer and 

 more slender, the head and legs smaller, the wings larger, and the 

 elytra more transparent, longer, and more pointed than in the 

 female. The terminal segment of the abdomen of females is as 

 large as the preceding ones, but is very small in the males. The 

 upper wings or tegmina have numerous veins, are lapped one over 

 the other horizontally on the back when at rest, and in the males 

 are nearly of the same consistence as the hind wings. 



The long oval eggs are laid in a roundish lump attached to twigs 

 of trees, each egg in a separate cell immersed in a gum-like 

 secretion. The young larvae are like the adult, but want the 

 wings. The pupae have very short wings and tegmina. 



The family Mantidce, including all the genera and species of 

 Mantis, constitutes the section Raptoria of the Orthopterous or 

 Dermapterous insects, the whole of them being carnivorous, and 

 feeding upon living insects, which they catch and hold by squeezing 

 them between the toothed inner edges of the tibia and leg of the 

 anterior pair of raptorial legs, like a pair Of jaws, while eating 

 them by the jaws of the mouth. 



Using the four simple hinder legs for walking, all the kinds of 

 Mantis have the singular habit of raising the extraordinarily long, 

 slender prothorax at a considerable angle with the rest of the body, 



[ 116 ] 



