310 
NATURE S CRAFTSMEN 
than that he should serve as a meal for his harried 
wife, whose own days, too, are numbered? By 
the way, somebody says that if there were only 
enough praying mantids in the country, they 
might eat all the other insects and finish by eating 
one another, thus leaving to us a bugless world! 
Small chance is there of this, however, for the 
mantids have enemies of their own, one of the 
worst being a certain species of small chalcis-fly, 
which lays her eggs in the gelatine braids and 
brings off her own babies on the nourishing man- 
tid eggs.’' 
