106 Bulletin de la Société Royale Entomologique d'Egypte 
nonne importance; but, owing to their habits, they 
cannot be kept under observation during the whole 
of their development. On the other hand, the Man- 
tidae are not very active, except when dispersing in 
search of a suitable position just after hatching; they 
are not gregarious and they spend the whole of their 
life in the open, once they have left the egg-case. They 
are, therefore, very suitable for investigations on the 
effect of seasonal variation on the rate of development 
of continuously breeding insects. This was the main 
object of our experiments. 
At the same time we hoped to get some infor¬ 
mation as to the causes of the variation in the number 
of moults already observed in Spliodromantis biocu¬ 
lata; Adair (1916.2) pp. 92-93; on the causes of the 
variation in colour of the adults and of the changes 
in colour during development and finally of the rela¬ 
tive numbers of males and 1 females. 
It was obvious that a very large number of in¬ 
dividuals would have to be bred, and it was for this 
reason that we chose the smallest of the Mantinae 
which occurs in Egypt, as the amount of food requir¬ 
ed would be the least. 
Our observations on parthenogenesis were thus 
only a side issue, but we publish them first for two 
reasons:— the question is of more general interest than 
the others we studied and it can be discussed without 
reference to the third generation, which would re¬ 
quire a long and careful examination of all our data. 
We hope to be able to do this in the near future. 
Each Mantis was kept in a separate cardboard 
box with a glass front during the whole of its deve- 
