160 INDIRECT BENEFITS DERIVED FROM INSECTS. 
until one only survived!; and De Geer relates several similar instances,? 
The younger larvee of Calosoma Sycophanta often take advantage of the 
helpless inactivity into which the gluttony of their maturer comrades has 
thrown them, and from mere wantonness, it should seem, when in no need 
of other food, pierce and devour them, A ferocity not less savage exists 
amongst the Mantes. These insects have their fore-legs of a construction 
not unlike that of a sabre; and they can as dexterously cleave their anta- 
gonist in two, or cut off his head at a stroke, as the most expert hussar, 
In this way they often treat each other, even! the sexes fighting with the 
most sayage animosity. Rdésel endeavoured to rear several specimens of 
M. religiosa, but always failed, the stronger constantly devouring the 
weaker.’ This ferocious propensity the Chinese children have, according 
to Mr. Barrow, employed as a source of barbarous amusement, selling to 
their comrades bamboo cages containing each a AJantis, which are put 
together to fight. You will think it singular that both in Europe and 
Africa these cruel insects have obtained a character for gentleness of dis- 
position, and even sanctity. This has arisen from the upright or sitting 
position, with the fore-legs bent, assumed in watching for their prey, 
which the vulgar have supposed to be a praying posture, and hence adopted 
the belief that a child or traveller that had lost his road would be guided 
by taking one of these pious insects in his hand, and observing what way 
it pointed. Mantis fausta, though not as some suppose worshipped by 
the Hottentots, is yet greatly esteemed by them, and they regard the 
person upon whom it alights as highly fortunate. A similar unnatural 
ferocity is exhibited by Gry/lus campestris, of which, having put the sexes 
into a box, I found on examining them that the female had begun to make 
her meal off her companion. The malign aspect of the scorpion leads us 
to expect from it unnatural cruelty, and its manners fulfil this expectation. 
Maupertuis put a hundred scorpions together, and a general and murderous 
battle immediately began. Almost all were massacred in the space of a 
few days without distinction of age or sex, and devoured by the survivors. 
He informs us also that they often devour their own offspring as soon as 
they are born.® Spiders are equally ferocious in their habits, fighting 
sanguinary battles, which sometimes end in the death of both combatants ; 
and the females do not yield to the Mantes in their unnatural cruelty to 
their mates. Woe be to the male spider that, alter an union, does not 
with all speed make his escape from the fangs of his partner! Nay, De 
Geer saw one that, in the midst of his preparatory caresses was seized by 
the object of his attentions, enveloped by her in a web, and then devoured 
—a sight which, he observes, filled him with horror and indignation.® 
Such are the benefits which we derive from the insects that keep each 
other in check. Here they are the destroyers to which we are chiefly 
indebted ; but we are in another point of view under nearly equal obliga- 
tions to the destroyed; for they are insects, either wholly or in part, that 
1 Reaumur, ii. 413, This habit is well known to our practical Lepidopterists, who 
have given the name of the Monsier Caterpillar to one of these cannibal species; & 
memoir upon which by Mr, Thrupp was lately read before the !ntomological Society. 
2 De Geer, i, 433. iii. B61. v. 400. vi, 91, $ Rosel, iv. 96. 
4 Thunberg’s Travels, ii, 66, 
5 De Geer, vii. 335, 6 Tbid, 180. 
