DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 87 



We are told by Koempfer, that the ladies in Japan have 

 long ago adopted with their brilliant beetles the custom we 

 would introduce with some of ours that of " keeping them " 

 for their incomparable beauty. 



Nor are Beetles the only insects under foreign domestica- 

 tion. Our prototype, the cricket, is said to be kept in Spain, 

 and hung by the fire as a song-bird in a cage (of paper) for 

 the merriment, if not melody, of his chirp. 



Again not as a bird of song, nor yet as a bird of beauty, 

 but as a bird of flight the cruel carnivorous Mantis is kept, 

 we are told, for sake of sport, by "Young China," as fighting 

 cocks were once kept or patronised by " Young England." 

 By the class which this term is used to designate, the latter 

 custom would now, we doubt not, be indignantly and with 

 justice disavowed ; and we would hope, therefore, that in our 

 new relations with the Celestial Empire we may never hear 

 of an exported main of regular bred game-cocks being returned 

 for an imported cage of regular trained fighting Mantes. 



Insect imports, for better purpose, not merely as cabinet 

 specimens but as living objects of admiring interest, we should 

 indeed most gladly welcome from China, that land where the 

 strange and grotesque, mingled with the splendid, prevails to 

 the full as much in insect as in artificial forms ; the latter bor- 

 rowed doubtless in a measure from the former. 



Brought from their native climate in the egg or pupa, and 

 reared in adapted temperatures, we see no reason why our hot- 



