r
flowers for the sake of protection are those truly diabolical and
perfidious Brazilian spiders which, as Mr. Bates observed, are
brilliantly coloured with crimson and purple, but 'double themselves up
at the base of leaf-stalks, so as to resemble flower buds, and thus
deceive the insects upon which they prey.' There is something hideously
wicked and cruel in this lowest depth of imitative infamy. A flower-bud
is something so innocent and childlike; and to disguise oneself as such
for purposes of murder and rapine argues the final abyss of arachnoid
perfidy. It reminds one of that charming and amiable young lady in Mr.
Robert Louis Stevenson's 'Dynamiter,' who amused herself in moments of
temporary gaiety by blowing up inhabited houses, inmates and all, out of
pure lightness of heart and girlish frivolity. An Indian mantis or
praying insect, a little less wicked, though no less cruel than the
spiders, deceives the flies who come to his arms under the false
pretence of being a quiet leaf, upon which they may light in safety for
rest and refreshment. Yet another abandoned member of the same family,
relying boldly upon the resources of tropical nature, gets itself up as
a complete orchid, the head and fangs being moulded in the exact image
of the beautiful blossom, and the arms folding treacherously around the
unhappy insect which ventures to seek for honey in its deceptive jaws.

Happily, however, the tyrants and murderers do not always have things
all their own way. Sometimes the inoffensive prey turn the tables upon
their torturers with distinguished success. For example, Mr. Wallace
noticed a kind of sand-wasp, in Borneo, much given to devouring
crickets; but there was one species of cricket which exactly reproduced
the features of the sand-wasps, and mixed among them on equal terms
without fear of detection. Mr. Belt saw a green leaf-like locust in
Nicaragua, overrun by foraging ants in search of meat for dinner, but
remaining perfectly motionless all the time, and evidently mistaken by
the hungry foragers for a real piece of the foliage it mimicked. So
thoroughly did this innocent locust understand the necessity for
remaining still, and pretending to be a leaf under all advances, that
even when Mr. Belt took it up in his hands it never budged an inch, but
strenuously preserved its rigid leaf-like attitude. As other insects
'sham dead,' this ingenious creature shammed vegetable.

In order to understand how cases lik