THE DEVIL'S RIDING-HORSE (MANTID&}. 31 



But as compared with those of the walking-sticks, all 

 these adventitious lobes are less indented ; they are 

 plainer and more defined, and the body is never covered 

 with spines, properly so called. 



At a glance one may recognize the genus Chseradodis, 

 by the great membrane which extends from each side, 

 and occupies the length of the long prothorax (see 

 Fig. 9). These insects are present not only in tropical 

 America, as in Costa Rica, Guayaquil, New Granada, 

 Ecuador, and Brazil, but in India, including Ceylon ; 

 and the flattened shape of Chceradodis rhombicollis, its 

 colour a delicate green, in part of a pale red almost 

 yellow, the large flat, rhomboidal prothoracic dilation, 

 with the lateral angles rounded, the long narrow 

 opaque green leaf-life elytra, the transparent wings, 

 the somewhat denticulate anterior legs, these features 

 all combine to make an insect as odd as it is interesting. 



The genus Deroplatys, which is apparently exclusively 

 Asiatic, replacing in the ancient world the genus Acan- 

 thops, is divided into two kinds, in virtue of its strange 

 leaf-like prothoracic appendage. It may be large towards 

 the front and small behind, in which case the form is 

 often quite grotesque ; or the reverse, it attains the 

 greatest size at the posterior end, and is more or less 

 triangular, but the shape often differs in the two sexes. 

 Deroplatys truncata (see Fig. 10), a species that must 

 be relegated to the latter class, is to be met with in 



