299 THE INSECT WORLD. 
Diou, is nothing better than a patient watcher and pitiless 
destroyer. The Mantis religiosa (Fig. 302), common enough in 
the south of France, comes as far north as the environs of Fon- 
tainbleau. The Mantis oratoria, rather smaller, is less commonly 
met with. | 
These elegant insects are remarkable for their long slim bodies, 
their large wings, and their colours, which are generally very 
bright. In some species their green or yellowish elytra look so 
exactly like the leaves of trees that one can hardly help taking 
them for such. 
The Mantis lays its eggs at the end of summer, in rounded, 
very fragile shells, attached to the branches of trees; they do not 
hatch till the following summer. The larve undergo several 
successive moultings. Nothing equals the ferocity of these 
Orthoptera. If two of them are shut up together, they engage ~ 
in a desperate combat; they deal each other blows with their 
front legs, and do not leave off fencing till the stronger of the 
two has succeeded in eating off the other’s head. From their very 
birth, the larvee attack each other. The male being smaller than 
the female, is often its victim. 
Kirby tells us that in China the children procure them as in 
France they do cockchafers, and shut them up in bamboo cages 
to enjoy the exciting spectacle of their combats. 
Acanthops, a genus of this family, inhabits the Brazils. 
Akin to the Mantis are the Hremiaphile, which live in the 
deserts of Africa and Arabia. They drag themselves gently along 
on the ground, and as they are of the same colour as the sand on 
which they are found, it is very difficult to distinguish them when 
at rest. The traveller, Lefebvre, relates that he always found 
these Orthoptera in places destitute of all vegetation, and where 
there were no other sorts of insects which could have served them 
for food; it is therefore probable that they live on microscopic 
insects. 
The Empusa, which forms another genus of Mantide, has the 
antennze indented like a comb in the males, thread-like in the 
females. The Hmpusa gongylodes, which inhabits Africa, has 
cuffs to its arms and flounces to its robe. 
The genus Blepharis, to which belongs the Blepharis mendica, 
