2/8 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECT?. 



insects have obtained a character for gentleness of dis- 

 position, and even sanctity. This has arisen from the 

 upright or sitting- position, with the fore legs bent, as- 

 sumed in watching for their prey, which the vulgar have 

 supposed to be a praying posture, and hence adopted 

 the belief that a child or traveller that had lost his road 

 would be guided by taking one of these pious insects 

 in his hands and observing what way it pointed. Man- 

 tis fausta, though not as some suppose worshipped by 

 the Hottentots, is yet greatly esteemed by them, and 

 they regard the person upon whom it alights as highly 

 fortunate^. A similar unnatural ferocity is exhibited 

 by Acheta canipeslris^ of which having put the sexes 

 into a box, I found on examining them that the female 

 had begun to make her meal off her companion. — The 

 malign aspect of the scorpion leads us to expect from 

 it unnatural cruelty, and its manners fulfil tJiis expecta- 

 tion. Maupertuis put a hundred scorpions together, 

 and a general and murderous battle immediately began. 

 Almost all were massacred in the space of a few days 

 without distinction of age or sex, and devoured by the 

 survivors. He informs us also that they often devour 

 their own offspring as soon as they are born ''. Spiders 

 are equally ferocious in their habits, fighting sanguinary 

 battles, which sometimes end in the death of both com- 

 batants; and the females do not yield to the Mantes in 

 their unnatural cruelty to tlieir mates. Woe be to the 

 male spider that after an union does not with all speed 

 make his escape from the fangs of his partner! Nay, 

 De Geer saw one that, in the midst of his preparatory 

 caresses, was seized by the object of his attentions, en-- 



^ Thunberg's Travels, ii. 6G. " Dc Geer, vii. 335. 



