MANTIS. 



61 



different glasses hoping in this way to render them 

 more pacific. But still the strongest in each little com- 

 munity, with the same savage disposition as before, tore 

 in pieces the weaker. 



Finally, he put a pair of these insects, full grown, 

 into a glass case, and having taken the precaution of 

 first supplying them with food, watched their actions. 

 But no sooner did they espy each other, than they stood 

 stiff and motionless, each eyeing the other with an air 

 of the sternest defiance. In this posture did they 

 remain for many minutes, when the whole frame of each 

 became violently agitated ; their necks were elevated, 

 their wings expanded, and in this state they rushed 

 towards each other with the utmost fury, and hewed 

 away with their sharp sabre-like fore feet, like, says 

 Roesel, a couple of infuriated Hussars. 



Barrow, the traveller, states that the Chinese keep 

 these insects in separate bamboo canes, for the purpose 

 of seeing them fight, as other people do game cocks ; 

 and that in the summer months, scarcely a boy is seen 

 in the streets, without a cage of these ferocious warriors. 

 A practice as barbarous with respect to these animals, 

 as it is humiliating to human beings. 



Follicle of the Mantis. The case, or sort of follicle, 

 which the Mantis constructs to contain her eggs is not 

 Fig. 42. ^- the least curious thing belong- 

 ing to this famous insect. This 

 case is about two inches long, 

 of a yellow color, of a texture 

 like parchment, and curiously 

 reticulated, or waved on the 

 outside. The shape is that of 

 a double cone united at their 

 bases. It is fixed to the stalk 

 of some plant, as seen by Fig. 

 42. 



Along one side there is a 

 kind of suture through which 

 the young escape as they are 

 hatched, the figure showing 

 some of them in this act 



