The foreleg, which is attached to the thigh by a very flexible articulation, is also a double-edged saw, but the teeth are smaller, more numerous, and closer than those of the thigh.  It terminates in a strong hook, the point of which is as sharp as the finest needle:  a hook which is fluted underneath and has a double blade like a pruning-knife.

A weapon admirably adapted for piercing and tearing, this hook has sometimes left me with visible remembrances.  Caught in turn by the creature which I had just captured, and not having both hands free, I have often been obliged to get a second person to free me from my tenacious captive!  To free oneself by violence without disengaging the firmly implanted talons would result in lacerations such as the thorns of a rosebush will produce.  None of our insects is so inconvenient to handle.  The Mantis digs its knife-blades into your flesh, pierces you with its needles, seizes you as in a vice, and renders self-defence almost impossible if, wishing to take your quarry alive, you refrain from crushing it out of existence.

When the Mantis is in repose its weapons are folded and pressed against the thorax, and are perfectly inoffensive in appearance.  The insect is apparently praying.  But let a victim come within reach, and the attitude of prayer is promptly abandoned.  Suddenly unfolded, the three long joints of the deadly fore-limbs shoot out their terminal talons, which strike the victim and drag it backwards between the two saw-blades of the thighs.  The vice closes with a movement like that of the forearm upon the upper arm, and all is over; crickets, grasshoppers, and even more powerful insects, once seized in this trap with its four rows of teeth, are lost irreparably.  Their frantic struggles will never release the hold of this terrible engine of destruction.

The habits of the Mantis cannot be continuously studied in the freedom of the fields; the insect must be domesticated.  There is no difficulty here; the Mantis is quite indifferent to imprisonment under glass, provided it is well fed.  Offer it a tasty diet, feed it daily, and it will feel but little regret for its native thickets.

For cages I use a dozen large covers of wire gauze, such as are used in the larder to protect meat from the flies.  Each rests upon a tray full of sand.  A dry tuft of thyme and a flat stone on which the eggs may be laid later on complete the furnishing of such a dwelling.  These cages are placed in a row on the large table in my entomological laboratory, where the sun shines on them during the greater part of the day.  There I install my captives; some singly, some in groups.

It is in the latter half of August that I begin to meet with the adult insect on the faded herbage and the brambles at the roadside.  The females, whose bellies are already swollen, are more numerous every day.  Their slender companions, on the other hand, are somewhat rare, and I often have some trouble in completing my couples; whose relations will finally be terminated by a tragic consummation.  But we will reserve these amenities for a later time, and will consider the females first.