As cages for my captives I have some ten large wire-gauze dish-covers, the same that are used to protect meat from the Flies. Each stands in a pan filled with sand. A dry tuft of thyme and a flat stone on which the laying may be done later constitute all the furniture. These huts are placed in a row on the large table in my insect laboratory, where the sun shines on them for the best part of the day. I instal my captives in them, some singly, some in groups.
It is in the second fortnight of August that I begin to come upon the adult Mantis in the withered grass and on the brambles by the road-side. The females, already notably corpulent, are more frequent from day to day. Their slender companions, on the other hand, are rather scarce; and I sometimes [[119]]have a good deal of difficulty in making up my couples, for there is an appalling consumption of these dwarfs in the cages. Let us keep these atrocities for later and speak first of the females.
They are great eaters, whose maintenance, when it has to last for some months, is none too easy. The provisions, which are nibbled at disdainfully and nearly all wasted, have to be renewed almost every day. I trust that the Mantis is more economical on her native bushes. When game is not plentiful, no doubt she devours every atom of her catch; in my cages she is extravagant, often dropping and abandoning the rich morsel after a few mouthfuls, without deriving any further benefit from it. This appears to be her particular method of beguiling the tedium of captivity.
To cope with these extravagant ways I have to employ assistants. Two or three small local idlers, bribed by the promise of a slice of melon or bread-and-butter, go morning and evening to the grass-plots in the neighbourhood and fill their game-bags—cases made of reed-stumps—with live Locusts and Grasshoppers. I on my side, net in hand, make a daily circuit of my enclosure, [[120]]in the hope of obtaining some choice morsel for my boarders.
These tit-bits are intended to show me to what lengths the Mantis’ strength and daring can go. They include the big Grey Locust (Pachytylus cinerescens, Fab.), who is larger than the insect that will consume him; the White-faced Decticus, armed with a vigorous pair of mandibles whereof our fingers would do well to fight shy; the quaint Tryxalis, who wears a pyramid-shaped mitre on her head; the Vine Ephippiger,[1] who clashes cymbals and sports a sword at the bottom of her pot-belly. To this assortment of game that is not any too easy to tackle, let us add two monsters, two of the largest Spiders of the district: the Silky Epeira, whose flat, festooned abdomen is the size of a franc piece; and the Cross Spider, or Diadem Epeira,[2] who is hideously hairy and obese.
I cannot doubt that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in the open, when I see her, [[121]]under my covers, boldly giving battle to whatever comes in sight. Lying in wait among the bushes, she must profit by the fat prizes offered by chance even as, in the wire cage, she profits by the treasures due to my generosity. Those big hunts, full of danger, are no new thing; they form part of her normal existence. Nevertheless they appear to be rare, for want of opportunity, perhaps to the Mantis’ deep regret.
Locusts of all kinds, Butterflies, Dragon-flies, large Flies, Bees and other moderate-sized captures are what we usually find in the lethal limbs. Still the fact remains that, in my cages, the daring huntress recoils before nothing. Sooner or later, Grey Locust and Decticus, Epeira and Tryxalis are harpooned, held tight between the saws and crunched with gusto. The facts are worth describing.
At the sight of the Grey Locust who has heedlessly approached along the trelliswork of the cover, the Mantis gives a convulsive shiver and suddenly adopts a terrifying posture. An electric shock would not produce a more rapid effect. The transition is so abrupt, the attitude so threatening that the observer beholding it for the first time at [[122]]once hesitates and draws back his fingers, apprehensive of some unknown danger. Old hand as I am, I cannot even now help being startled, should I happen to be thinking of something else.
You see before you, most unexpectedly, a sort of bogey-man or Jack-in-the-box. The wing-covers open and are turned back on either side, slantingly; the wings spread to their full extent and stand erect like parallel sails or like a huge heraldic crest towering over the back; the tip of the abdomen curls upwards like a crosier, rises and falls, relaxing with short jerks and a sort of sough, a “Whoof! Whoof!” like that of a Turkey-cock spreading his tail. It reminds one of the puffing of a startled Adder.
Planted defiantly on its four hind-legs, the insect holds its long bust almost upright. The murderous legs, originally folded and pressed together upon the chest, open wide, forming a cross with the body and revealing the arm-pits decorated with rows of beads and a black spot with a white dot in the centre. These two faint imitations of the eyes in a Peacock’s tail, together with the dainty ivory beads, are warlike ornaments kept hidden at ordinary times. They are [[123]]taken from the jewel-case only at the moment when we have to make ourselves brave and terrible for battle.