A word more on the Praying Mantis, or, as they say in Provence, lou Prégo Diéou, the Pray-to-God. Her long, pale-green wings, like spreading veils, her head raised heavenwards, her folded arms, crossed upon her breast, are in fact a sort of travesty of a nun in ecstasy. And yet she is a ferocious creature, loving carnage. Though not her favourite spots, the work-yards of the various Digger-wasps receive her visits pretty frequently. Posted near the burrows, on some bramble or other, she waits for chance to bring within her reach some of the arrivals, forming a double capture for her, as she seizes both the huntress and her prey. Her patience is long put to the test: the Wasp suspects something and is on her guard; still, from time to time, a rash one gets caught. With a sudden rustle of wings half-unfurled as by the violent release of a clutch, the Mantis terrifies the newcomer, who hesitates for a moment, in her fright. Then, with the sharpness of a spring, the toothed fore-arm folds back on the toothed upper arm; and the insect is caught between the blades of the double saw. It is as though the jaws of a Wolf-trap were closing on the animal that had nibbled at its bait. Thereupon, without unloosing the cruel machine, the Mantis gnaws her victim by small mouthfuls. Such are the ecstasies, the prayers, the mystic meditations of the Prégo Diéou. Of the scenes of carnage which the Praying Mantis has left in my memory, let me relate one. The thing happens in front of a work-yard of Bee-eating Philanthi. These diggers feed their larvæ on Hive-bees, whom they catch on the flowers while gathering pollen and honey. If the Philanthus who has made a capture feels that her Bee is swollen with honey, she never fails, before storing her, to squeeze her crop, either on the way or at the entrance of the dwelling, so as to make her disgorge the delicious syrup, which she drinks by licking the tongue which her unfortunate victim, in her death-agony, sticks out of her mouth at full length. This profanation of a dying creature, whose enemy squeezes its belly to empty it and feast on the contents, has something so hideous about it that I should denounce the Philanthus as a brutal murderess, if animals were capable of wrongdoing. At the moment of some such horrible banquet, I have seen the Wasp, with her prey, seized by the Mantis: the bandit was rifled by another bandit. And here is an awful detail: while the Mantis held her transfixed under the points of the double saw and was already munching her belly, the Wasp continued to lick the honey of her Bee, unable to relinquish the delicious food even amid the terrors of death. Let us hasten to cast a veil over these horrors.