2 4 TRUE TALES OF THE INSECTS. 



After each moult the mantis is languid and sickly, and 

 unequal to the chase, and relapses into the timorous state 

 of the period of extreme youth, so that but a glimpse of 

 an insect near by suffices to throw it into a condition of 

 violent agitation and terror ; but soon the pangs of a 

 voracious appetite cast fear and timidity to the winds, 

 and it freely attacks and subdues to its needs other larvae 

 and insects. By-and-by its agility becomes such, that it 

 not only climbs on tree-trunks with remarkable ease in 

 pursuit of prey, and passes from branch to branch with 

 the utmost facility, but it takes on the movements of the 

 monkey which we meet with among adults, letting itself 

 fall from one branch to another, hanging suspended, and 

 recovering itself by aid of the long, sharp tibial claw. 



The organs of flight appear under the form of simple 

 prolongations of the teguments of the lateral borders of 

 the segments of the meso- and metathorax ; and in these 

 stumps can be distinguished some of the principal parts, 

 and they hold the normal position. The last moult 

 suddenly develops the elytra and wings in all their 

 extent, an enormous and truly astonishing development, 

 one still unexplained, when we compare the voluminous 

 organs with the little sheaths in which they were con- 

 tained among the nymphs. 



It is the nymphs that approach the sub-apterous adult 

 mantidae, as among Coptopteryx females, in which the 

 wings, although not separated from the metathorax, 



