ROUGHING IT IN SOUTHERN INDIA 55 



half an inch across, so that it takes quite a quantity to 

 make a dishful ; they are very tasty when stewed, and 

 perfectly wholesome. 



The white ants themselves, at their winged stage, are 

 caught and fried as a great delicacy. Packets of these 

 have often been brought to us as gifts, and, being eminently 

 ' perishable,' * might be accepted. I had curiosity enough 

 to taste them, and found that they had been daintily 

 cooked in some aromatic oil flavoured with coriander. 



If some few little animals and insects oblige me to call 

 them ' pests,' others can only be regarded as ' jokes ' ; of 

 such are all the mantis, or amantis tribe, for they take 

 the strangest forms, or rather, I should say, they are the 

 exact likenesses of simple inanimate things. An end of 

 straw seven or eight inches long, in no way differing in 

 appearance from any other straw, will stalk off on very 

 long, spindly legs, when you will see that it has good powers 

 of locomotion, and a head furnished with serviceable eyes 

 with which to see where it is going, but only a piece of 

 straw for a body. 



So, too, you may notice a pea-shell lying on the ground, 

 rather mysteriously if there are not any peas about just 

 then ; but that it is one you make no doubt, and so abso- 

 lutely indistinguishable is it from any other pea-shell that 

 you can hardly believe your own eyes when you see it get 

 up on thin, stiff legs and walk away. Even when you 

 take these things in your hand to examine them closely, 

 the illusion, far from being dispelled, is only the more 

 mystifying. 



The ' praying ' mantis is a strange, twig-like creature, 

 with a habit of sitting up and so folding its limbs that no 

 better name for it could have been found. 



All the mantis kind (leaf-insects) are quite harmless, nor 



1 Government makes this distinction as to gifts that may be accepted by 

 its servants. 



