-♦) Fauna : invertebrates 



There are several GrylLe or crickets that are predaceous 

 and insectivorous in their food. They come out at night, and 

 will pounce upon moths, literally tearing them in pieces, biting 

 off and jerking aside the wings, and then attacking and devouring 

 the soft body with their powerful jaws. Delighted as I always 

 am to see insects destroyed (since they are the curse of creation) 

 there is something rather shocking in the leopard-like pounces 

 of these carnivorous crickets. Another very repulsive object is 

 the Mole cricket (Gryllotalpa)^ with its enormous and powerful 

 front legs adapted for digging. 



The various kinds of Mantis are amongst the few insects 

 that are really tolerable to the human observer. They are so 

 exceedingly quaint in their ways, and are often of such delicate 

 and even exquisite coloration, generally green in varying shades. 

 One or more species have the wings marked with a great ocellus 

 in black and pink. These insects can give one's skin a nasty 

 pinch or scratch if they nip it between the toothed sections of 

 the great fore-legs. But they are working on the side of 

 humanity in being the leopards of the insect class, destroying 

 and devouring all other insects that they can overpower. 



In this country there are several species of Stick insects 

 {PhasmidiF) — the slender Bacillus gracUipes (like a fragment 

 of hay) and the monstrous Palophus centaurus, resembling a 

 lichen-speckled branch with its divergent twigs hung with an 

 occasional leaflet. Some of them grow to a length of eight 

 inches. 



Termites (white ants), probably Termes bellicosus and T. 

 mordax, are found in Liberia, but it cannot be said that these 

 insects are as great a pest or do as much damage in this country 

 as in less forested parts of Africa. One very seldom hears 

 about them in Liberian towns on the coast, though at no great 

 distance from these settlements there are large, tall, castellated 

 VOL. n 849 22 



