82 MANTID^ — SOOTHSAYERS, ETC. 



year; so we say,' a good dull, wet summer, is a good beetle 

 summer ; and this has been a very fertile year, and we only 

 hope it will be as good next year. 



'' We don't believe in rat-destroyers ; they profess to kill 

 with weasels and a lot of things, and sometimes even say 

 they can charm them away. Captains of vessels, when 

 they arrive in the docks, will employ these people ; and, as 

 we say, they generally use our composition, but as long as 

 their vessels are cleared of the vermin, they don't care to 

 know how it is done. A man who drives about in a cart, 

 and does a great business in this way, we have reason to 

 believe uses a great quantity of our Phosphor Paste. He 

 comes from somewhere down the East-end or Whitechapel 

 way. 



"Our prices are too high for the street-sellers. Your 

 street-seller can only afford to sell an article made by a 

 person in but a very little better position than himself 

 Even our small boxes cost at the trade price two shillings 

 a dozen, and when sold will o*ily produce three shillings; 

 so you can imagine the profit is not enough for the itinerant 

 vendor. 



"Bakers don't use much of our paste, for they seem to 

 think it no use to destroy the vermin — beetles and bakers' 

 shops generally go together."^ 



If a black beetle enters your room, or flies against you, 

 severe illness and perhaps death will soon follow. I have 

 never heard this superstition but in Maryland. 



Mantidae — Soothsayers, etc. 



We now come to a very extraordinary family of insects, 

 the Mantidae. "Imagination itself," as Dr. Shaw well ob- 

 serves, "can hardly conceive shapes more strange than those 

 exhibited by some particular species."^ " They are called 

 Mantes; that is, fortune-tellers," says Moufifet, "either be- 

 cause by their coming (for they first of all appear) they do 



1 London Labor and London Poor, iii. 40-1. 

 ^ Zool, vi. 118. 



