Daily independent. [volume] (Elko, Nev.) 188?-1915, 1913-07-21
PRAYING FOR PREY.
The Mantis Seems to Be Doing That
While Awaiting Victims.

| While Awaiting Victims.
Most persons know the praying
mantis-that large, greepish, grass
hopper-iike insect which holds up
adoring arms as if generating some
deity of the woods or making an in
Vocation-an oracle among insects,
as the old Greeks thought it. But
these attitudes of prayer conceal
the most atrocious habits. These
duplicating arms, to fall into
Fabre's picturesque phrasing, arc
lethal weapons. These fingers tell
no rosaries, but exist to seize the
passerby. Although a member of a
vegetarian family, the mantis feeds
exclusively on its living prey. 1t is
a tiger in ambush, and if only il
had sufficient strength its ogreish
appetite and its horrible facility
of concealment by color and form
among the green leaves where
peaceful insects travel would make
it the terror of the countryside.
At first glance it does not look
very terrible. Its neck is flexible,
and it can turn its head and look
with sharp eyes in all directions,
but no formidable jaws alright q
victim. In its powerful uplifted
fore limbs lies the hidden danger,
the cruel trap. Each long thigh,
shaped like fiattened spindle, car.
ries on the forward half of its lower
face a double row of steely spincs,
alternately long and short, and
three needlelike spikes, longest of
all, rise behind the parallel rows,
between which the fore leg lies
when folded in prayer" This
fore part of the leg is similarly arm
ed, but with smaller spikes, and
terminates in a hook with a blade
like pruning knife and tip as
sharp as a needle. Handle the in
sect incautiously and this armament
discovers itself to you instantly,
thrusting its needles and blades
into your flesh, gripping you in a
singing wise and forcing you to
crush 1T to get free.
When the mantfs is in repOsc
these weapons are folded and press.
ed against the chest, showing moth
ing of their ferocity. The bandits
sword is sheathed, and it seems at
it's devotions. But let victim
come within reach and the ruse-
if ruse it be-is abandoned like a
flash. The three long joints of the
deadly fore limbs straightcn and
shoot out their talons, which strike
the victim like the unsheathed claws
of a cat and drag it back between
the saws of the thighs. The wise
closes with an upward motion, as a
man would bring his hand up to
his shoulder, and no cricket, grass
hopper, beetle or spider can strug
gle out of the crook Of that terrible
Acknowledgements Weekly.
The secret Of success is constancy OF
purpose-T.ord Reaconaaeld.
English Triumphant.
One Of the reasons why English ia
expected to become world language
Is that English people refuse to learn
another. A correspondent sends the
following example: At Muscat, at the
entrance to the Persian gulf, there
lived. for many years an Englishman.
supposed to be the only, or almost the
only, British resident on the 1900 miles
Of Arabian coastline from Alden to 10.
welt. 1t would seem that he could
hardly have escaped knowing Arabic.
Yet he confessed that he could not
speak a dozen words Of that language.
But how do you carry on your
trader" some one asked.
"Oh," he replied. 1.-THE beggars have
to learn English. "--London Globe.