280 Forty-first Report on the State Musettm. 



published in 1869, has written of it: "I have found the mass while it was 

 yet quite soft and freshly laid, and have dissected the female just before 

 she was about to deposit, and I incline to believe that it is gradually pro- 

 truded in a soft, mucilaginous state, being covered at the time with a 

 white, frothy, spittle-like substance, which soon hardens and becomes 

 brittle upon exposure to the air." One who had witnessed the operation 

 has rather vaguely stated of it that the eggs are " pumped out, and the 

 entire mass elaborately shaped, with a fine instinct of construction as the 

 process continues." 



Arrangement of the Egg-Packet. 



Apparently, the most reliable account of the structure of the packet and 

 its deposit, is that given by Mr. H. G. Hubbard, in his Insects Affecting the 

 Orange, which states : " The eggs occupy flattened cells, placed in two 

 ranks, alternating with each other ; the cluster of cells has a braided or 

 woven appearance, but c(^isists simply of a continuous ribbon of mucus, 

 folded in close flutings, and having an egg deposited in the bight or angle 

 of each fold. The eggs are deposited simultaneously with the deposition 

 of this ribbon by the mother insect, and the whole mass is at first soft and 

 flexible, but rapidly hardens by exposure to the air. 



The eggs are laid during the month of September, and are hatched in 

 June of the following year. 



Egg-packets of Other Species. 



Prof. Westwood, in his Classification of Insects (i, p. 424), has figured the 



egg-mass of a Brazilian Mantis, which is attached to a twig at its base, and 



resembles a seed-pod, being of a green color, and terminating in a long, 



acute point ; and another case of a species from Bengal, of an oval, nearly 



globular form, attached to a twig by its longest diameter, with its keel 



upward. 



Appearance of the Insect. 



The insect produced from these eggs is of so peculiar and unusual an 

 appearance, that in the Southern States where it occurs, it has received the 

 popular names of "rear-horse," "race-horse," "praying Mantis," "camel- 

 cricket," and even " the devil's riding-horse." In Europe they are known 

 as sooth-sayers, diviners {prie-Dieu in France), from their strange attitude 

 when at rest, as if engaged in prayer, with uplifted hands. It is a brownish 

 or yellow-green long-legged creature, two inches or more in length, broad- 

 bodied in" the female, but narrow in the male ; the many- veined thin wings 

 resemble folded leaves ; the front wings have each a brown spot centrally, 

 and are borne rather flat over the back ; the thorax is slender and almost as 

 long as the body, looking like an elongated neck ; the head is small, but 

 much broader than it is long, triangular, and carried vertically. The two 

 sexes— the slender male and the stouter female, are shown in Figure 66, 

 from Professor Eiley's First Missouri Eeport. 



Its Food and Habits. 



When the Mantis is disturbed, it raises its long back almost perpendicu- 

 larly, with its long, stout, heavily-spined fore-legs in position for striking 

 out at any object with which it is threatened. Its food consists entirely of 

 living insects. In making its captures, it either lies motionless for hours 

 at a time in wait for its prey, or else steals so slowly upon them that its 



