Spring comes. We are in March. My prisoners bestir themselves, change their skin. They need victuals. My catering difficulties recommence. The House-fly, so easy to catch, is lacking in these days. I fall back upon earlier Diptera: Eristales, or Drone-flies. The Empusa refuses them. They are too big for her and can offer too strenuous a resistance. She wards off their approach with blows of her mitre. A few tender morsels, in the shape of very young Grasshoppers, are readily accepted. Unfortunately, such wind-falls do not often find their way into my sweeping-net. Abstinence becomes obligatory until the arrival of the first Butterflies. Henceforth, Pieris brassicæ, the White Cabbage Butterfly, will contribute the greater portion of the victuals. Let loose in the wire cage, the Pieris is regarded as excellent game. The Empusa lies in wait for her, seizes her, but releases her at once, lacking the strength to overpower her. The Cabbage Butterfly’s great wings, beating the air, give her shock after shock and compel her to let go. I come to the weakling’s assistance and cut the wings of her prey with my scissors. The maimed ones, still full of life, clamber up the trelliswork and are forthwith grabbed by the Empusæ, who, in no way frightened by their protests, crunch them up. The dish is to their taste and, moreover, plentiful, so much so that there are always some despised remnants. The head only and the upper portion of the breast are devoured: the rest—the plump abdomen, the best part of the thorax, the legs and lastly, of course, the wing-stumps—is flung aside untouched. Does this mean that the tenderest and most succulent morsels are chosen? No, for the belly is certainly more juicy; and the Empusa refuses it, though she eats up her House-fly to the last particle. It is a strategy of war. I am again in the presence of a neck-specialist as expert as the Mantis herself in the art of swiftly slaying a victim that struggles and, in struggling, spoils the meal. Once warned, I soon perceive that the game, be it Fly, Locust, Grasshopper or Butterfly, is invariably struck in the neck, from behind. The first bite is aimed at the point containing the cervical ganglia and produces sudden death or immobility. Complete inertia will leave the consumer in peace, the essential condition of every satisfactory repast. The Devilkin, therefore, frail though she be, possesses the secret of immediately destroying the resistance of her prey. She bites at the back of the neck first, in order to give the finishing stroke. She goes on nibbling around the original attacking-point. In this way, the Butterfly’s head and the upper part of the breast are disposed of. But, by that time, the huntress is surfeited: she wants so little! The rest lies on the ground, disdained, not for lack of flavour, but because there is too much of it. A Cabbage Butterfly far exceeds the capacity of the Empusa’s stomach. The Ants will benefit by what is left.