For once the language of science and the vocabulary of the peasant agree.  Both represent the Mantis as a priestess delivering oracles, or an ascetic in a mystic ecstasy.  The comparison is a matter of antiquity.  The ancient Greeks called the insect [Greek:  Mantis], the divine, the prophet.  The worker in the fields is never slow in perceiving analogies; he will always generously supplement the vagueness of the facts.  He has seen, on the sun-burned herbage of the meadows, an insect of commanding appearance, drawn up in majestic attitude.  He has noticed its wide, delicate wings of green, trailing behind it like long linen veils; he has seen its fore-limbs, its arms, so to speak, raised towards to the sky in a gesture of invocation.  This was enough:  popular imagination has done the rest; so that since the period of classical antiquity the bushes have been peopled with priestesses emitting oracles and nuns in prayer.

Good people, how very far astray your childlike simplicity has led you!  These attitudes of prayer conceal the most atrocious habits; these supplicating arms are lethal weapons; these fingers tell no rosaries, but help to exterminate the unfortunate passer-by.  It is an exception that we should never look for in the vegetarian family of the Orthoptera, but the Mantis lives exclusively upon living prey.  It is the tiger of the peaceful insect peoples; the ogre in ambush which demands a tribute of living flesh.  If it only had sufficient strength its blood-thirsty appetites, and its horrible perfection of concealment would make it the terror of the countryside.  The Prego-Dieu would become a Satanic vampire.

Apart from its lethal weapon the Mantis has nothing about it to inspire apprehension.  It does not lack a certain appearance of graciousness, with its slender body, its elegant waist-line, its tender green colouring, and its long gauzy wings.  No ferocious jaws, opening like shears; on the contrary, a fine pointed muzzle which seems to be made for billing and cooing.  Thanks to a flexible neck, set freely upon the thorax, the head can turn to right or left as on a pivot, bow, or raise itself high in the air.  Alone among insects, the Mantis is able to direct its gaze; it inspects and examines; it has almost a physiognomy.

There is a very great contrast between the body as a whole, which has a perfectly peaceable aspect, and the murderous fore-limbs.  The haunch of the fore-limb is unusually long and powerful.  Its object is to throw forward the living trap which does not wait for the victim, but goes in search of it.  The snare is embellished with a certain amount of ornamentation.  On the inner face the base of the haunch is decorated with a pretty black spot relieved by smaller spots of white, and a few rows of fine pearly spots complete the ornamentation.

The thigh, still longer, like a flattened spindle, carries on the forward half of the lower face a double row of steely spines.  The innermost row contains a dozen, alternately long and black and short and green.  This alternation of unequal lengths makes the weapon more effectual for holding.  The outer row is simpler, having only four teeth.  Finally, three needle-like spikes, the longest of all, rise behind the double series of spikes.  In short, the thigh is a saw with two parallel edges, separated by a groove in which the foreleg lies when folded.