without
displaying any further interest in it. Such is the ennui of captivity!

To provide them with a luxurious table I have to call in assistants. Two
or three of the juvenile unemployed of my neighbourhood, bribed by
slices of bread and jam or of melon, search morning and evening on the
neighbouring lawns, where they fill their game-bags, little cases made
from sections of reeds, with living grasshoppers and crickets. On my own
part, I make a daily tour of the paddock, net in hand, with the object
of obtaining some choice dish for my guests.

These particular captures are destined to show me just how far the
vigour and audacity of the Mantis will lead it. They include the large
grey cricket (_Pachytylus cinerascens_, Fab.), which is larger than the
creature which devours it; the white-faced Decticus, armed with powerful
mandibles from which it is wise to guard one's fingers; the grotesque
Truxalis, wearing a pyramidal mitre on its head; and the Ephippigera of
the vineyards, which clashes its cymbals and carries a sabre at the end
of its barrel-shaped abdomen. To this assortment of disobliging
creatures let us add two horrors: the silky Epeirus, whose disc-shaped
scalloped abdomen is as big as a shilling, and the crowned Epeirus,
which is horribly hairy and corpulent.

I cannot doubt that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in a state of
nature when I see it, under my wire-gauze covers, boldly give battle to
whatever is placed before it. Lying in wait among the bushes it must
profit by the prizes bestowed upon it by hazard, as in its cage it
profits by the wealth of diet due to my generosity. The hunting of such
big game as I offer, which is full of danger, must form part of the
creature's usual life, though it may be only an occasional pastime,
perhaps to the great regret of the Mantis.

Crickets of all kinds, butterflies, bees, large flies of many species,
and other insects of moderate size: such is the prey that we habitually
find in the embrace of the murderous arms of the Mantis. But in my cages
I have never known the audacious huntress to recoil before any other
insect. Grey cricket, Decticus, Epeirus or Truxalis, sooner or later all
are harpooned, held motionless between the saw-edges of the arms, and
deliciously crunched at leisure. The process deserves a detailed
description.

At the sight of a great cricket, which thoughtlessly approaches along
the wire-work of the cover, the Mantis, shaken by a convuls