When the Mantis (Rear-horse) kneels, it sees an angel in the way, or hears the rustle of its wings. When it alights on your hand, you are about to make the acquaintance of a distinguished person; if it alights on your head, a great honor will shortly be conferred upon you. If it injures you in any way, which it does but seldom, you will lose a valued friend by calumny. Never kill a Mantis, as it bears charms against evil.
From the great resemblance of many species of Mantis to the leaves of the trees upon which they feed, some travelers, who have observed them, have declared that they saw the leaves of trees become living creatures, and take flight.
Madame Merian informs us of a similar opinion among the Indians of Surinam, who believed these insects grew like leaves upon the trees, and when they were mature, loosened themselves and crawled, or flew away.
We find also in the works of Piso an account of insects becoming plants. Speaking of the Mantis, that author says: “Those little animals change into a green and tender plant, which is of two hands breadth. The feet are fixed into the ground first; from these, when necessary humidity is attracted, roots grow out, and strike into the ground; thus they change by degrees, and in a short time become a perfect plant. Sometimes only the lower part takes the nature and form of a plant, while the upper part remains as before, living and movable; after some time the animal is gradually converted into a plant. In this Nature seems to operate in a circle, by a continual retrograde motion.”[272]
There may be, however, much truth in this remarkable metamorphosis; for, that an insect may strike root into the earth, and, from the co-operation of heat and moisture, congenial to vegetation, produce a plant of the cryptogamic kind, cannot be disputed. Westwood states that he has seen a species of Clavaria, both of the undivided and branched kinds, which had sprung from insects, and were four times larger than the insects themselves. In truth, it cannot then be denied that Piso may not have seen a plant of a proportionate magnitude which had likewise grown out of a Mantis. The pupæ of bees, wasps, and cicadas, have been known to become the nidus of a plant, to throw up stems from the front part of the head, and change in every respect into a vegetable, and still retain the shell and exterior appearance of the parent insect at the root. Specimens of these vegetated animals are frequently brought from the West Indies. Mr. Drury had a beetle in the perfect state, from every part of which small stalks and fibers sprouted forth; they were entirely different from the tufts of hair that are observed in a few Coleopterous insects, such as the Buprestis fascicularius of the Cape of Good Hope, and were certainly a vegetable production.[273] Mr. Atwood,
in his account of Dominica, describes a “vegetable fly” as follows: “It is of the appearance and size of a small Cock-chafer, and buries itself in the ground, where it dies; and from its body springs up a small plant, resembling a young coffee tree, only that its leaves are smaller. The plant is often overlooked, from the supposition people have of its being no other than a coffee plant, but on examining it properly, the difference is easily distinguished.… The head, body, and feet of the insect appearing at the foot as perfect as when alive.”[274]
Dr. Colin, of Philadelphia, has mentioned, also, on the authority of a missionary, a “vegetable fly,” similar to the last mentioned, on the Ohio River.[275]
The inhabitants of the Sechell Islands raise the Mantis siccifolia, or Dry-leaf Mantis, as an object of commerce and natural history.
Achetidæ—Crickets.
In the Island of Barbados, the natives look upon the creaking chirp of a species of Cricket, to which Hughes has given the name of the Ash-colored or Sickly Cricket, when heard in the house, as an omen of death to some one of the family.[277]