Proceedings of the South African Philosophical Society. xxix 
In the larval stage, variation in colour is comprehensible as indicating 
one of the several moulting periods, during which the outer integu- 
ment undergoes a desiccation preparatory to casting, but this expla- 
nation does not apply to the adult forms. Certainly in South Africa, 
the Mantide show colours harmonising with their surroundings, and 
the brownish, dead-wood-like Popa will not be captured in a green 
bower, any more than Pseudocreobotra will be met with on the 
reddish soil of the Karroo. 
Such protective resemblance is not, however, limited to the young 
or adult Mantis. It is equally conspicuous in the shape of the 
ootheca, or egg-containing cocoon, made by the females. Some of 
these are marvellous imitations of seed-pods attached to blades of 
grass. They have, in fact, little appearance of their real character. 
I have purposely said ‘“‘made”’ by the female, because she shapes 
and fashions the foam-like matter, of which the cocoon is formed, 
with her hind legs and the apical part of her abdomen. 
It is difficult to discover if the increase in number of Mantide or 
Sagid@ is in the ratio of their highly protective resemblance. In 
South Africa, however, the Mantide cannot be said to be more 
numerous in number and species than orthopterous insects of other 
families; the Sagzd@ are, however, certainly much rarer than the 
Mantide, and very difficult to procure. 
The Hemipterous family Reduviide, which either have no odorific 
apparatus, or at all events do not emit a pungent smell, also con- 
tains many examples of predacious species showing aggressive re- 
semblance. The wings and legs of some are so altered by dilatation, 
or excision, of parts that the assimilation to surroundings becomes 
periect. The Cape species, Pephricus capicola, P. paradoxus, 
Craspedum phylomorphun might easily be pitted against the best 
protected Mantis or Stick-Insect for effectiveness of imitative colour 
and pattern. Pephricus capicola was first described by the traveller 
and naturalist, Sparrman, who relates, as quoted by Westwood,* that 
‘when at the Cape in 1772, he observed this insect at noontide as 
he sought shelter from the intolerable heat of the sun among the 
branches of a shrub. Though the air was so extremely still and 
calm as hardly to have shaken an aspen-leaf, he yet thought he saw 
a little, withered, pale, crumpled leaf eaten as it were by caterpillars, 
fluttering from the tree. This appeared to him so extraordinary that 
he suddenly left his bower to examine it. He could scarcely believe 
his eyes when he saw creeping on the ground a live insect in shape 
and colour resembling the fragment of a withered prickly leaf with. 
* “ Arcana Entomologica,’ vol. i., p. 7. 
