MANTIS. 



57 



different glasses, hoping in this way to render them more 

 pacific. But still the strongest in each little community, 

 with the same savage disposition as before, tore in pieces 

 the weaker. 



153. 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 eying 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 

 violent agitated ; their necks were elevated, their wings 

 expanded, and in this state they rushed toward each 

 other with the utmost fury, and hewed away with their 

 sharp, sabre-like fore feet, like, says Roesel, a couple of 

 infuriated Hussars. 



154. Barrow, the traveller, states that the Chinese 

 keep these insects in separate bamboo canes, for the pur- 

 pose 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. 



Fig. 42. 



155. Follicle of the Mantis. The case, or sort of fol- 

 licle which the mantis constructs to contain her eggs is not 

 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 out- 

 side. 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. 



