favourable to rapid stowage in the warehouse, for then the Mantis' legs
stretch backwards, along the axis of the body, instead of folding and
projecting sideways, when their resistance would be difficult to overcome
in a narrow gallery. The lanky prey dangles beneath the huntress, all limp,
lifeless and paralysed. The Tachytes, still flying, alights on the
threshold of the home and immediately, contrary to the custom of Panzer's
Tachytes, enters with her prey trailing behind her. It is not unusual for a
male to come upon the scene at the moment of the mother's arrival. He is
promptly snubbed. This is the time for work, not for amusement. The
rebuffed male resumes his post as a watcher in the sun; and the housewife
stows her provisions.

But she does not always do so without hindrance. Let me recount one of the
misadventures of this work of storage. There is in the neighbourhood of the
burrows a plant which catches insects with glue. It is the Oporto silene
(S. portensis), a curious growth, a lover of the sea-side dunes, which,
though of Portuguese origin, as its name would seem to indicate, ventures
inland, even as far as my part of the country, where it represents perhaps
a survivor of the coastal flora of what was once a Pliocene sea. The sea
has disappeared; a few plants of its shores have remained behind. This
Silene carries in most of its internodes, in those both of the branches and
of the main stalk, a viscous ring, two- to four-fifths of an inch wide,
sharply delimited above and below. The coating of glue is of a pale brown.
Its stickiness is so great that the least touch is enough to hold the
object. I find Midges, Plant-lice and Ants caught in it, as well as tufted
seeds which have blown from the capitula of the Cichoriaceae. A Gad-fly, as
big as a Blue bottle, falls into the trap before my eyes. She has barely
alighted on the perilous perch when lo, she is held by the hinder tarsi!
The Fly makes violent efforts to take wing; she shakes the slender plant
from top to bottom. If she frees her hinder tarsi she remains snared by the