INSECT INTRUDERS. 



sport or to keep his hand in. He never 

 attempted to eat them or to kill them 

 outright, the crippled creatures hobbling 

 away as fast as they could the moment 

 they reached the table cloth. Now and 

 then he missed his prey and this seemed 

 to incite his choler. In the callous con- 

 tempt of his attitude to the lesser insect 

 life crawling and fluttering around him 

 on the white cloth, he reminded me of 

 nothing so much as one of Walter Scott's 

 lordly Feudal Barons of the Dark Ages. 

 Some of the mantises simulate flowers. 

 In the year 1877 Dr. J. Anderson 

 showed to the members of the Asiatic 

 Society of Bengal a most curious mantis 

 (shown here half natural size) from the 

 neighbourhood of Midnapur in Bengal 

 whose under surface has the appearance 

 of the corolla of a pink papilionaceous 

 flower. The position usually taken up 

 by this insect is to hang head downwards 

 amongst green foliage, either motionless 

 or swaying gently as if blown by the 



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