Love is stronger than death, men say. Taken literally, the aphorism has never received a more brilliant confirmation. A headless creature, an insect amputated down to the middle of the chest, a very corpse persists in endeavouring to give life. It will not let go until the abdomen, the seat of the procreative organs, is attacked. Eating the lover after consummation of marriage, making a meal of the exhausted dwarf, henceforth good for nothing, can be understood, to some extent, in the insect world, which has no great scruples in matters of sentiment; but gobbling him up during the act goes beyond the wildest dreams of the most horrible imagination. I have seen it done with my own eyes and have not yet recovered from my astonishment. Was this one able to escape and get out of the way, caught as he was in the midst of his duty? Certainly not. Hence we must infer that the loves of the Mantis are tragic, quite as much as the Spider’s and perhaps even more so. I admit that the restricted space inside the cages favours the slaughter of the males; but the cause of these massacres lies elsewhere. Perhaps it is a relic of the palæozoic ages, when, in the carboniferous period, the insect came into being as the result of monstrous amours. The Orthoptera, to whom the Mantes belong, are the first-born of the entomological world. Rough-hewn, incomplete in their transformation, they roamed among the arborescent ferns and were already flourishing when none of the insects with delicate metamorphoses, Butterflies, Moths, Beetles, Flies and Bees, as yet existed. Manners were not gentle in those days of passion eager to destroy in order to produce; and the Mantes, a faint memory of the ghosts of old, might well continue the amorous methods of a bygone age. The habit of eating the males is customary among other members of the Mantis family. I am indeed prepared to admit that it is general. The little Grey Mantis, who looks so sweet and so peaceable in my cages, never seeking a quarrel with her neighbours however crowded they may be, bites into her male and feeds on him as fiercely as the Praying Mantis herself. I wear myself out, scouring the country to procure the indispensable complement to my gynæceum. No sooner is my powerfully-winged and nimble prize introduced than, most often, he is clawed and eaten up by one of those who no longer need his aid. Once the ovaries are satisfied, the Mantes of both species abhor the male, or rather look upon him as nothing better than a choice piece of venison. CHAPTER VIII THE MANTIS: HER NEST Let us show the insect of the tragic amours under a more attractive aspect. Its nest is a marvel. In scientific language it is called ootheca, the egg-case. I shall not overwork this outlandish term. We do not say, “the Chaffinch’s egg-case,” when we mean, “the Chaffinch’s nest:” why should I be obliged to talk about a case when I speak of the Mantis? It may sound more learned; but that is not my business.