ECCENTRIC INSECTS.* TIME was—and not so very long ago, either—when
there were no reliable books on entomology, even on British butterflies and moths, except at a price which put them beyond the reach of the general public. Of late, however, British butterflies and mufti hive been rather overdone, and we are glad to find a lady; already favourably known to the entomological world by a previous work, breaking new ground by devoting the greater part of the volume before us to the highly interesting, but comparatively neglected, Order Orthoptera, which, though poorly represented in England, includes abroad the largest insects known, the walking sticks, or Phasmida., and also the most destructive of all insects, the true locusts. In the present work, Miss Badenoch confines herself to the ifaniithe, the praying insects, or, as she thinks they are more appropriately called in Brazil, the Devil's riding horse ; the Phasmidie (walking sticks or walking leaves); and the Aeridildm and Locustidz (locusts and grasshoppers). The only other insects dealt with in the book are mimicking butterflies, day-flying moths, case-moths, or Psyehidx, and hawk-moths in general and the death's head hawk-moth in particular. But even here Miss Badenoch's materials are sufficiently well selected and arranged to be intqresting, though much of it will be more familiar to her readers than the earlier portion of the book. Several of the chapters on Lepidoptera have previously appeared in magazines, including "Symbols of Psyche," into which she has introduced the story of Cupid and Psyche,—perhaps a greater novelty now to the reading public than it might have been some years ago, when more attention was paid to the classics and less to science than at present.
Neither the Mantidx nor the Phasmidx reach our shores, though a few small species of the latter are found on the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and the former are found in many parts of Southern and Western France, and the commonest species is said to have been found as far north as Frankfort-on-Main in the last century. If it still lingers in that neighbourhood it is perhaps in the valley of the Nahe, where several South European insects, not found elsewhere so far north, are common. The mantis, however, could perhaps be easily kept in captivity in England, and its habits are well worthy of observation. Its long, broad, flattened front-legs are raised into an attitude of profound devotion, and have caused the insect to be looked upon with much reverence in many countries, and have given it the name of the praying mantis. However, the term preying mantis would be more appropriate, and the upraised fore-legs are as devotional as the wax arms of a lady of whom we once read in a newspaper paragraph, who used to pick the pockets of those who knelt by her in church while her arms were thus raised. As Miss Badenoch tells us of the mantis- " It is as observant and quick as a monkey, as sly and stealthy as a eat ; it is the tiger, not the saint, of the insect world. Its so-called devotional attitude is simply nothing but a lying in wait for what the gods may send in the shape of food. Establishing itself, as if in rapture, upon some twig or leaf, it will remain thus absolutely stationary, prepared to seize any unwary insect that may fall within convenient reach. After it exhibits a wonderful degree of patience, let us say an insect happens to alight within a short distance of it. Instantly it catches sight of the new-comer, and begins, with slow, silent tread, to steal towards it. So imperceptible the motion, it can only be appreciated by steady and prolonged watching. At the same time, the forelegs, which up till now had been bent back upon themselves, commence to open. Little by little, the hunter creeps near its unconscious prey, its goggle eyes staring upon this object of absorbing interest. At last it is close enough to strike ; and with celerity of movement the eye cannot follow, a formidable foreleg is shot out to its full length, and brings back the victim, hopelessly secured and crushed between the shank and thigh, and scarcely more than a moment is lost ere the body is torn to pieces, and devoured."
Mr. Roland Trimen has also graphically described a swarm of butterflies and other insects around the exuding sap of a tree in South Africa, and among them a huge mantis—death in the midst of plenty—a veritable skeleton at the feast.
In strange contrast to the predacious Mantidx are their nearest insect allies, the sluggish, plant-feeding stick-insects, or Phasraidke, whose only safety is to remain inactive among the plants they resemble, indistinguishable as they are from dried twigs ; twigs overgrown with moss ; or green or brown leaves, according to their shape and structure. They are probably very numerous in the tropics, but have been little collected, for even the largest species are practically invisible when at rest, and entomological collectors usually turn their attention to insects, such as butterflies and beetles, which are more easily collected and find a more ready sale. One or two resemblance to green jointed shoots of bamboo. The eggs of Phasmida, several of which are figured, are very remarkable objects, much resembling seeds, and are scattered among the herbage at random. Another curious point about Phasraidm is the power they possess of reproducing a limb lost at an
early stage of life, after the next moult.
Among the Phasmidz, not the least curious are the broad- winged species of Phylliunz, which exactly resemble green leaves ; and these are paralleled in another part of the volume, by the genus Kallima among the butterflies, in
which the under surface of the wings exactly resembles a brown faded leaf, footetalk and all.
Our senses are mostly localised in the head, but this is very far from being the case in insects, though some of their most important organs, such as the eyes, antennae, and palpi, are thus situated. In most grasshoppers and locusts the organs of hearing are situated on the front legs, a little below the knee ; an oddity which might have led Charles Dickens to pause and reflect before saying : "I no more believe Topper
was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots:,
After all, ears in your shins seems to be about the next thing to it.
Many pages of Miss Badenoch's book are devoted to migratory locusts, respecting which she has compiled a good deal of interesting information :-
" Carruthers, in Nature, estimates a great flight of locusts that passed over the S.S. Golconda,' when off the Great Hanish Islands, in the Red Sea, in November, 1889, at over two thousand square miles in extent the number of insects he calculates to have been 24.420 billions, and the weight of the mass 42,580 millions of tons, each locust weighing one-sixteenth of an ounce ; and the ship of six thousand tons burden, he adds, must have made seven million voyages to carry this great host, even if packed together 111 times more closely than they were flying. Another, apparently a stronger,
flight was seen going in the same direction next day According to official accounts of locusts in Cyprus. no fewer than 1,600 million egg-cases were collected and made away with in 1881, up to the end of October : and by the end of the season the weight of the eggs collected and destroyed amounted to over 1,300 tons In 1649 locusts devastated the island of Teneriffe on the way over [from Africa] they alighted on the water in a heap as big as the largest ship."
Locusts are merely casual visitors in England and never breed here ; but we can easily perceive that if the natural cheeks to their increase were relaxed, the human inhabitants of the world would be as little able to cope with their ravages as with those of an earthquake. In some countries, we believe that specially constructed guns and mortars have been em- ployed against them, though we have not heard with what success ; but if a warship should happen to encounter a vast floating mass like that described as descending on the sea between Africa and Teneriffe, she might do worse than turn her guns upon it.
But we must now take leave of one of the most interesting books of popular entomology that we have seen for some time.
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