and seldom voluntary.  Immediately she alights the anterior legs are extended, the head is depressed between the thighs, and the legs which are at liberty become as rigid as twigs.  Among the branches of a shrub her action is cautious and stealthy; but the stick insect is seldom to be caught napping.  It is very wide awake when it plays the dual part of a sleepy snake and four crooked twigs.  In youth, the colouring of the female is ashy green, almost exactly the tint of the most common of arboreal snakes, and at the time of life when it is less able to defend itself it seems to spend all its days in the snake-like posture.

In some respects this insect resembles the mantis RELIGIOSA; but it does not seem to possess the voracious appetite of that insect, which assumes the supplicatory attitude that it may the more readily seize its prey.  Indeed, although two specimens were under observation for three months, at morning, noon and eve, I only once saw one eating, and then it was partaking sparingly of orange leaves.  The insect is well-known as a vegetarian, but the manner of its feeding is singular.  The part that it takes of a motionless snake would be ineffective if the head moved while eating, and Nature provides against any blundering of that sort.  The edge of a leaf is guided to the mouth, which appears to open vertically—­not horizontally as mouths usually do—­by a set of palpi or feelers, three on each side.  The palpi move the leaf along, the while a crescent-shaped strip is rapidly nibbled away.  Then they move the leaf back again to the original starting point, and another crescent is devoured, and so on, while the extended anterior legs, hooked on to a twig, pull the body forward with a gliding, almost imperceptible motion as the leaf is gradually consumed.  Between meals, the palpi are folded flat close to the mouth, like the blades of a pocket-knife.

Blacks classify most of the works of Nature under two headings—­“Good to eat,” “Not good to eat,” and nearly everything is included under the former.  The “Taloo” or “Yam-boo” is included in the larger class.  Ruthlessly deprived of its limbs, the insect is placed squirming on hot embers until it becomes crisp, when it is eaten with great relish.

GREEN-ANT CORDIAL

White ants, black ants, red ants, brown ants, grey ants, green ants; ants large, ants small; ants slothful, ants brisk; meat-eating ants, grain-eating ants, fruit-eating ants, nectar-imbibing ants; ants that fight, ants that run away; ants that live under coldest stone, ants that dwell among the treetops; silent ants, ants that literally “kick up” a row; good ants, bad ants, ants that are merely so so—­we have them all and would not part with any—­not even the stinging green ants, which are among the most singular of the tribe, nor even the “white ant” (which is not an ant), that would literally eat us out of house and home if not rigorously excluded and warred against with poison, for they are the great scavengers of woodeny debris.