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OF THE 
BROOKLYN ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 
VoL. XIII OCTOBER, 1918 No. 4 
INTRODUCTION OF PALZARCTIC PREYING MANTIDS 
INTO THE NORTH ATLANTIC STATES. 
By Wm. T. Davis, Staten Island, N. Y. 
In Entomological News for June, 1808, there is a short account 
by Philip Laurent of the capture of a female mantis, Tenodera 
simensis (Saussure), in the garden of Mr. Joseph Hindermeyer, 
Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, October 16, 1897. A plate made from a 
photograph of the insect accompanies the article. 
From this time on we find as many as twenty-six references to 
the species in the pages of Entomological News. The insect ap- 
pears to have spread from Meehan’s nursery, where the egg 
masses were found by Ella Jacobs in March, 1898, and Mr. 
Laurent presented to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila- 
delphia two females taken in Meehan’s nursery, Germantown, in 
1898. Mr. Laurent states in the News for 1899, page 273, that 
he received his first specimens from the nursery in 1896. The 
egg masses are reported as being in great abundance at Mt. Airy, 
Philadelphia, in the fall of 1900. At a meeting of the Feldman 
Collecting Social held November 20, 1901, Professor J. B. Smith 
recorded Tenodera sinensis from Elizabeth, New Jersey, but 
could not find any egg masses. On page 62, Vol. XIII, 1902, Mr. 
Laurent states that he had gathered about half a barrel of egg 
masses of Tenodera at Mt. Airy, and that the insect preferred 
blackberry and briar bushes as a place of abode, and avoided low 
ground with low herbage. 
The egg masses of this beneficial insect were given to several 
entomologists, who distributed them over various parts of New 
Jersey, and in 1908 H. W. Wenzel found many specimens in sev- 
