Here, then, we have an aggressive, as well as a protective, resemblance—for, no doubt, the two are combined—of which principle we have another example in a certain mantis of India, which resembles, in a manner equally deceptive, if not quite so perfect, a more attractive object, namely, a flower. Most of us have seen pictures of the ordinary green praying mantis, a curious kind of insect, allied to the grasshoppers, that has received its name owing to its habit of sitting motionless with the fore part of its body raised, and its fore legs extended, as though it were praying. Really, however, it is waiting for its prey, which, when it approaches, it cuts to pieces by pressing together, as though it were shutting a knife, the flattened and blade-like joints of the legs it has held out so holily; first, of course, having got the victim between them. The mantis in question does not look quite like the praying one. Instead of rearing itself upright, it sits flat on the leaf, and its body is not green, but pink. Being rounded, it passes for the centre of a flower, whilst the legs, which diverge from it at different angles, and are flattened in the most extraordinary manner, bear a still more striking resemblance to the petals. Sitting thus, a flower amongst flowers, it is approached by many insects which, too late, discover the real nature of that somewhat strange-looking blossom. Here, then, we have a flower-insect. Stick-insects—walking-stick insects as we call them—or grass-insects, are more common. They are especially abundant in Central Africa. Anyone who sees one of these creatures for the first time is infallibly taken in by them, though he may have read about them often, and made up his mind not to be. He is strengthening himself, perhaps, in this resolution, at the moment when, having at last got to the country where they abound, he happens to be brushing away, with his hand, a small wisp of hay or dry grass that he sees clinging to his coat. But that wisp of hay is the very insect he has set himself to recognise, but which now, even when his native servants point it out to him and tell him what it is, he cannot for the life of him make out to be anything but what it looks like. It is just a slight stem of yellow, withered grass, from which six still slighter pieces hang, at intervals, in pairs. Bend the stem as you will, and twist the bits that hang from it how you like, they all stay just as you put them, as long as they have anything to rest against. But if you take the thing, at any point, between your thumb and finger, and hold it in the air, then the other parts of it will either remain stiff or dangle down, just as you would expect them to do, if it were a piece of grass that you held. The insect seems jointed everywhere, so that, what with this, and the thinness and ridiculous length of its body and all its legs, it does not even look like a healthy growing grass, but only a long, thin bit that has first