The Empusa 



of hunting, without danger of being appre- 

 hended and gobbled up. 



The two sexes hve together in peace and 

 mutual indifference until the middle of July. 

 Then the male, grown old and decrepit, takes 

 counsel with himself, hunts no more, becomes 

 shaky in his walk, creeps down from the 

 lofty heights of the trellised dome and at 

 last collapses on the ground. His end comes 

 by a natural death. And remember that the 

 other, the male of the Praying Mantis, ends 

 in the stomach of his gluttonous spouse. 



The laying follows close upon the disap- 

 pearance of the males. The Empusa, when 

 about to build her nest, has not the round 

 belly of the Praying Mantis, rendered heavy 

 and inactive by her fertility. Her slender 

 figure, still capable of flight, announces a 

 scanty progeny. Her nest, fixed upon a 

 straw, a tv/ig, a chip of stone, is quite as 

 small a structure as that of the dwarf Mantis 

 {Ameles decolor) and measures two-fifths of 

 an inch, at most, in length. The general 

 shape is that of a trapezoid, of which the 

 shorter sides are, respectively, sloping and 

 slightly convex. As a rule, the sloping side 

 is surmounted by a thread-like appendage, 

 similar to the final spur of the nests of the 



207 



