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SOUTH AFE1CA 
taken off this plant, together with a Mantis that was presumably 
attracted by the insects rather than the flowers. 
Dr. Dixey found on a tree another small Mantis, bright leaf-green 
in colour, which he kept alive for over a week. It was seen to catch 
a fly by a motion of lightning-like quickness and eat it, rejecting the 
wings and abdomen. When approached it would smartly assume 
the “praying” attitude, sometimes also turning its head in the 
direction of the visitor. It used to clean its eyes by passing its fore¬ 
legs over them, with an action like that of a cat cleaning its face. 
It also cleaned its antennae in its mouth, bringing them down by its 
fore-legs. 
A soft-skinned Cantharid, Decatoma lunata, Pallas, looked con¬ 
spicuous enough on a pale straw-yellow liliaceous flower. 
It was at the Second Creek that the finding of two species of 
Heterochelus, allied to vulpinus , Burm., buried in yellow Composite 
flowers, first drew my attention to the little Lamellicorn beetles of the 
sub-family Kopliinae. They are numerous in Cape Colony, and we 
came across no less than thirteen species. The most obvious charac¬ 
teristic of the group is the great length of their posterior legs. The 
development of these varies greatly in different species, but as a 
general rule is much greater in the males than in the females; indeed 
in some species the male femora and tibiae are grotesquely dispro- 
portioned to the animals; moreover both femora and tibiae are 
provided on their inner sides with strong spurs or spines (perhaps 
better described as teeth). These strange limbs evidently attracted 
the attention of the older writers, since Fabricius named one species 
dentipes , and Burmeister another forcipatus . The explanation of 
these hypertrophied legs that is usually received is that they are 
used by the males to grasp the females. Mr. Trimen, accepting this 
explanation, tells me that he thinks copulation is attended with 
especial difficulty in these beetles. 
The latest writer on the subject, Mr. Peringuey, rejects the 
ordinary explanation in the following words :■— 
“The great development of the hind-legs is not intended for 
securing a better hold of the female. There is nothing more ridiculous 
than to see half a dozen males with their long hind-legs emerging 
from the pistils of a Composite flower where they are mobbing a 
female which is almost entirely buried head foremost in the pistils, 
the sub-horizontal pygidium alone being exposed to view. But it 
is when disentangling themselves that the use of the long hind-legs 
becomes apparent; by means of his long, hinged claw the male hooks 
himself out [of the corolla. It is not only amongst the flower- 
