224 ROMANCE OF THE INSECT WORLD CHAP. 



even butterflies are attracted, as insects to flowers, 

 and the deceivers feed on the dupes allured. An 

 equally interesting instance of this striking simu- 

 lation is exhibited by another Indian mantis, 

 Gongylus gongylodes (Linn.). It is, however, only 

 the under surface of the animal that displays the 

 resemblance. The leaf-like prothoracic * expansion, 

 instead of being green, is of a clear pale lavender- 

 violet colour, inclining to mauve, and acquiring a 

 reddish tinge towards the margins, and with a 

 black-brown blotch in the centre, representing 'the 

 opening of a tube in the middle of a flower's corolla. 

 The insect is addicted to hanging head downwards 

 amongst a mass of green foliage, and remains motion- 

 less, or occasionally sways about like a flower touched 

 by a gentle breeze. With its fore-limbs banded violet 

 and black, and drawn up in the centre of the corolla, 

 it looks exactly like a papilionaceous * flower. The 

 disguised limbs act as a decoy to insects, which fly 

 directly into the sabre-like raptorial * arms of the 

 simulator. 1 



The resemblances of spiders to flowers are 

 probably chiefly cases of the same offensive dis- 

 guise, as opposed to purely defensive imitations. 

 The bunches of blossom of the way-faring tree, 

 Viburnum* have been observed to be occupied by 

 spiders of a pale creamy white, the exact tint of the 

 flowers, and their abdomen closely resembled the 

 unopened buds of which there were many in each 

 cyme not only in colour, but in size and shape. 

 These spiders are by nature hunters and not web- 

 1 Proc, Entom. Soc., 1877, xlix, 



