52 Bulletin 185. 



" the young have to escape from the chambers in which they are 

 coniined in tlie egg-cases ; tliey do so in a most curious manner ; not 

 by the use of the feet, but by means of spines directed backwards 

 on the cerci and legs, so that when tlie body is agitated advance is 

 made in only one direction. The eggs last deposited are said to be 

 the lirst to hatch. On reaching the exterior the young Mantids do 

 not fall to the ground, but remain suspended, after the manner of 

 spiders, to the ootheca by means of two threads attached to the 

 extremities of the cerci ; in this strange position they remain for 

 SQuie days^ until the first change of skin is effected, after which 

 they commence the activity of their predatory life. When the 

 young of Mantis religiosa merges from the Qgg, it bears little 

 resemblance to the future insect, but looks more like a tiny pupa ; 

 the front legs, that will afterwards become so remarkable, are short 

 and not different from the others, and the head is in a curious 

 mummy-like state, with the mouth-parts undeveloped and is unflexed 

 on the breast ; there are, says Pagenstecher, nine abdominal seg- 

 ments. The first ecdysis (shedding of the skin) soon takes place and 

 the creature is thereafter recognizable as a young Mantis. Pagen- 

 stecher's specimens at first would only eat plant-lice, but at a later 

 stage of the development they devoured other insects greedily : the 

 number of ecdyses is seven or eight. The ocelli appear for the first 

 time when the wing rudiments do so ; the number of joints in the 

 antennae increases at each moult. Dr. Pagenstecher considers that 

 this insect undergoes its chief metamorphosis immediately after 

 leaving the egg, the earlier condition existing apparently to fit the 

 insect for escaping from the egg-case." 



The young or nymphs which we reared we first fed on plant-lice, 

 and later on with all sorts of small insects which we could sweep up 

 from the grass with a net. At c and c in figure 12 are shown two 

 nymphs which became adults at the next shedding of their skins. 

 The nymphs have the same voracious and cannibalistic appetites as 

 the adult insects. They are not difficult to rear from the Qgg^ if one 

 keeps them supplied with living insects and isolated in individual 



* We have made no careful observations on this point, but we doubt if the 

 time they remain in this condition is more than a few hours, as Cockerell found 

 in the case of a species of Stagmomantis in New Mexico (Am. Nat., 1898). 



