THE NATURALIST.

Otago Witness, Issue 2622, 15 June 1904, Page 68

THE NATURALIST.

Flowers cf Frey. Probably in some respects the most «uvpribing results of late entomological exploration 19 itihe cli»co\ery of semblances of orchidaceous floviers endowed with animal life and voracious, carnivorous appetites, that se ; ze and incontinently devour insect vegetarians which, allured by their form and colour, incautiou-ly alight upon them. These- flower insects belong to the curious family Manitidae, of which we have a wellGcnown member in our Southern States, Phasmomanthis Carolina, commonly called "praying mantis," though if the first part of the name were spelled with an "c" msteadl of an "a" it would be far more appropriate, since no known insect is more bloodthirsty and destructn c of smaller and j weaker individuals belonging to its elas s*.5 *. Its foi"m. is characteristic of its predatory habits. The mantis is really a four-legged insect, but the four limbs are so modified that they cannot under any cireunWances be used in walking, and arc no more properly termed logs than would be the arms of men or the wings of birds. They are, in fact, the natural weapons of the insect, and are used for nothing else than fighting and' capturing pr«y. An insect diseove-reel by Wood Mason masquerades sometimes a<s a pink and afc otQiers as a white orchid. The whole flower insect is either conspicuously white or of a resplendent pimk colour, and both in colour and form perfectly imitates a flower. The lower or apparently anterior petal of its orchidaceous blossom, the labellum, often of a very curious shape, is repiescnled by tli» abdomen p£ th,o insect, while the parts

1 which might be taken, regarding it as an j insect, for its wings, arc actually the femurs I of the two pa ; rs of posterior limbs, so greatly 3xpandcd, flattened E»nd shaped in such a. manner as to represent the remaining petals of the Sower. As the mantas rests, head downward, amid the stems and leaves of "a plant, the forelegs drawn in so that they cannot be seen, the highs of the two hind ones radiating out on each side, ond the thorax and the abdomen raised at right angles to each other, the insect might easity at first si.ght deceive more discriminating entomologists than the honey suckers that settle upon it. An allied species, exactly resembling a pink orchid, is mentioned by Dr "Wallace, on the authority of Sir Charles Dilke, as inhabiting Java. Its specialty is alluring and capturing butterflies. The expected guest having arrived, the seeming feast spread out for his delectation, arises and devours him. Professor S. Kurz, while at Pegu, in lower Burmah, saw what he supposed to be an orchid, of a species unfamiliar to him. but upon examination found it to be a mantas, of the genus gonglus. As is common with the habit of its kind when alighted upon a plant, it hung head downward, exposing the under surface to view, sometimes motionless, and sometimes swaying gently like a flower touched) by gentle zephyrs. A bright \iolet-blue dilation of the thorax,. in front of which its forelegs, banded violet and black, extended like petals, simulated tho corolla of a papilionaceous flower so perfectly as to deceive ■Hie eyes of a practised botanist. A whole tribe of spiders, members of the Thomisadae family, living in flower cups, assume the colours and markings of tho flowers in which they lie in wait for victims. Brazilian birds, fly-catcbers, display a bril-liantly-coloured cre-fc easily mistaken, for a flower cup. Insects, attracted by what appears to be a fre«hly opened blossom, furnish the birds with food. An Asiatic lizard is ent>rcly coloured like the surface of tho desert plains where it lives, except at each angle of the mouth blooms a brilliant red folding of the fle=h, exactly re-sembling-a little flower that grows in tho sand. Insects lured by the seeming flower arc incontinently disillusioned when they settle upon it. — fckreutifio American.