the good opinion held of this hardy
cannibal.

For it is a cannibal, and enjoys eating another mantis as much as
anything else.

The mantes are terrible fighters, too, and if there is a meeting between
two of them, there is very apt to be a battle in which one is vanquished
and devoured by the other.

Our mantis lays its eggs, thirty or forty in number, on tree twigs, and
they are embedded in a soft substance that soon becomes very tough and
horny. These strange egg-cases of the mantis are easily recognized
because they look as though they were braided on top, as you can see in
the picture.

[Illustration]

Yes, May, the tough covering is to protect the eggs from wet and from
prying birds and hungry insects.

The young mantes are similar to their parents, only they have no wings.
But they hold up their spiny front legs and catch insects, and they grow
and moult in the usual way.

While we have been talking about leaf-like insects and mule-killers our
walking stick has gone off.

[Illustration]

Well, well, let him go, and good luck go with him.

I am glad you like the walking stick, children.

And now, May, let me tell you something.

This queer fellow is a very near relative of your friend, the
cockroach.

[Illustration]

THE GRASSHOPPER TRIBES

Don't you often wonder where they come from? The swarms of grasshoppers
in the late summer?

Charlie says he walked across a field last night where he believes there
were as many grasshoppers as there were blades of grass.

Just think of it! and yet they do not seem to do any harm.

In some places, however, they do a great deal of harm.

They come flying in swarms that darken the sun, and they settle on the
trees and the crops and eat up every green thing. There is nothing a
Western farmer dreads so much as the passing of the grasshoppers.

Grasshoppers are funny little fellows, and we like them--when there are
not too many of them.

Summer would not seem quite like summer unless we heard the grasshoppers
shrilling.

There are a great many species of them, and we have placed them in two
divisions,--The Shorthorned Grasshoppers and The Longhorned
Grasshoppers.

[Illustration]

THE SHORTHORNED GRASSHOPPERS

They have no horns, of course, but some have short antennae that stick
out like little horns, and those we call shorthorned.

The right name for the shorthorned grasshoppers is locusts.

We call another insect a locust, b