266 Prof. J. Wood-jMason on the presence 



ever heard the Mantidm stridulate, these insects being 

 common enough Avhere good observers have been and 

 still are?" to which I reply, that the species in which 

 the stridulating apparatus occurs are few in number ; that 

 a 'Mantis ' is a cautious, timid, and reserved creature, re- 

 quiring much coaxing and persuasive manipulation to 

 induce it to pei-form ; and that somebody has at last been 

 found who has heard a ' Mantis ' stridulate, and whose 

 evidence is at once confirmatory of my interpretation 

 of the structures as a stridulating organ, and of my later 

 view as to its modus operandi. 



During the recent meeting of the British Association 

 at Dublin I chanced to get into conversation with Mr. 

 J. Tate, an engineer, who is at present home on 

 furlough from India, and who had been stationed while in 

 that country at Sukkur in Sind. As it seemed to me 

 probable that this officer's professional duties might occa- 

 sionally have carried him into the desert, I inquired 

 whether he had ever met with Eremiapliila, — a singular 

 genus of Mantidce, the members of which are more pro- 

 foundly modified for a desert life than any other animals 

 known to me, — and, if so, whether he coidd furnish me 

 with any information as to its habits. He replied, that 

 he had never met with any insects at all answering to my 

 description ; but added, without further questioning on my 

 jjart, that he had frequently seen the more ordinary kinds 

 of ' Mantis^ and that he still had a particularly vivid recol- 

 lection of one Avhich flew into the billiard-room one night 

 and was placed upon the green table to make sport for 

 the assembled company, who were all much amused, and 

 apparently not a little astonished, at the creature's curious 

 antics, but especially at the " hissing noise which it kept 

 making " without, as my informant confidently believes, 

 the slightest visible movement of the organs of flight. 



If the tegmina were similarly modified in all the 

 species of the family, any attempt to trace the steps by 

 which the modification has originated would be hopeless ; 

 but in one of the two groups in which I have detected 

 the apparatus we fortunately have a number of species 

 with unmodified teg-mina ; in the handling of living: and 

 alcoholic specimens of some of which a rustling noise is, 

 as I have noticed, produced whenever the fore margin of 

 the tegmina is accidentally rubbed across the legs or 

 across the projecting anterior nervures of the wings. 



This circumstance seeming to suggest that a careful 



