QUEER LITTLE FOLKS. 137 



immediate neighborhood. If it becomes too numerous, 

 however, it is got rid of not by open war, but by a course 

 of systematic, and yet apparently unintentional, annoy- 

 ance. The agriculturists suddenly find it necessary to ex- 

 tend their field and enlarge the base of their city. In 

 carrying out these alterations they literally bury the nests 

 of their neighbors under heaps of the small pellets of soil 

 thrown up by the prairie earth-worms, and continue this 

 process until the erratic ants, in sheer despair, remove to a 

 quieter spot. 



THE PRAYING MANTIS. 



1. Species of insects known as mantids belong to the 

 order Orthoptera, which includes crickets, grasshoppers, 

 cockroaches, locusts, etc. The following figure illustrates 

 the appearance of one of these. They are of bright, varie- 

 gated colors, and are sometimes quite large, even three or 

 four inches in length. The mantis lays its eggs at the end 

 of summer, in rounded, fragile shells, which it attaches to 

 the branches of trees, and which do not hatch till the fol- 

 lowing summer. It differs in locomotion from its orthop- 

 terous relatives, which travel by jumps, while the mantis 

 crawls so slowly that its progress can only be appreciated 

 by careful and prolonged watching. This trait is con- 

 nected with another character by which the mantis differs 

 from the foregoing groups, for, while they are vegetarians, 

 this insect is carnivorous, and its insidious movements are 

 part of the policy by which it captures the various creat- 

 ures upon which it feeds. 



2. But the mantis is not only a carnivore which lives 

 by killing and devouring other insects, it is also a creature 

 of the most quarrelsome disposition ; in fact, it is a fero- 

 cious cannibal. If two of these insects be shut up together, 



