after demoralising them with terror. But we
have yet to learn the worst. The customs of the Mantis in connection
with its own kin are more atrocious even than those of the spiders, who
bear an ill repute in this respect.

To reduce the number of cages on my big laboratory table, to give myself
a little more room, while still maintaining a respectable menagerie, I
installed several females under one cover. There was sufficient space in
the common lodging and room for the captives to move about, though for
that matter they are not fond of movement, being heavy in the abdomen.
Crouching motionless against the wire work of the cover, they will
digest their food or await a passing victim. They lived, in short, just
as they lived on their native bushes.

Communal life has its dangers. When the hay is low in the manger
donkeys grow quarrelsome, although usually so pacific. My guests might
well, in a season of dearth, have lost their tempers and begun to fight
one another; but I was careful to keep the cages well provided with
crickets, which were renewed twice a day. If civil war broke out famine
could not be urged in excuse.

At the outset matters did not go badly. The company lived in peace, each
Mantis pouncing upon and eating whatever came her way, without
interfering with her neighbours. But this period of concord was of brief
duration. The bellies of the insects grew fuller: the eggs ripened in
their ovaries: the time of courtship and the laying season was
approaching. Then a kind of jealous rage seized the females, although no
male was present to arouse such feminine rivalry. The swelling of the
ovaries perverted my flock, and infected them with an insane desire to
devour one another. There were threats, horrid encounters, and cannibal
feasts. Once more the spectral pose was seen, the hissing of the wings,
and the terrible gesture of the talons outstretched and raised above the
head. The females could not have looked more terrible before a grey
cricket or a Decticus. Without any motives that I could see, two
neighbours suddenly arose in the attitude of conflict. They turned their
heads to the right and the left, provoking one another, insulting one
another. The _pouf! pouf!_ of the wings rubbed by the abdomen sounded
the charge. Although the duel was to terminate at the first scratch,
without any more serious consequence, the murderous talons, at first
folded, open like the leaves of a book, and are extended laterally