Evening star., 1949-11-29
This and That
Bv Charles E. TraceweH
ARLINGTON, VA.

Dear Sir: .-s..a-r-st
"On asrecent bright sunny morning while
raking leaves in the back lawn my attention
was suddenly drawn to strange looking OBJ
ject on a white painted chair.
I'm squat position, it was some kind Of
diversified insect with body about 3 " inches
long and with wide protruding eyes on q
rather fiat head that resembled frogs.
1T was perfect green in color. had its
legs joined under its rigid body, looked as If
it could spring in any direction. II would
have been an excellent specimen for q COL
lector.
ITO me it was the most cruel looking in
sect had ever seen.
"I thought 1t would make some kind Of
move when began my inspection. but it
remained rigid even when gently eased it
off the chair and into a warm dry place in
the swamp grass.
Gould this have been a male mantis?
yours sincerely, E. L. w."
More likely to have been female mantis
The female as so often among the crea-
lures Of nature, is the larger Of the two.
She is also the meaner.
She thinks nothing at all Of eating her
mate for breakfast.
Then. If there are any children around.
Sllc swallows tlen 1OT lunch.
A bad one. this female of the species, but
neither male nor female gets any medals for
kindness
Nature in the raw Is kind only as a sort
Of afterthought.
The question is, What right have men to
expect kindness in nature?"
Gentleness, as exemplihed in humans, is
result of applied Christianity, lifting man
to the human level at last.
The great sadness OF recent years is that
we have discovered how many men there
are who are eager to 60 back to the brute
cruelty of nature.
Gentleness among the animals is a more
subtle thing. Some show genuine love, as
we understand it, for their young, or at play.
Every one has experienced the gentleness
Of some pet animal, so that it is impossible
to feel that such kindness is the possession
Of mankind alone.
But it is confined to the vertebrate ami
mails.
The insects know nothing of it, and the
fishes (backboneO very little, although here
and there in the watery wastes there may
be some glimmers of it.
BY and large the fishes and insects are
inhumanly cruel, and that is simply saying
that they cannot be kind.
The insects live in different world from
ours.
When they crawl over our houses they
must look upon them as mountains, If they
have any conception at all Of such matters.
The broom in the hands of the housewife
would strike the insect as just another Of his
travails in an inimical world.
The temptation Of poisoned food would be
overpowering, but If he were genius among
insects he would resist it and 60 on. Those
that did not would die the death, and that
would be the end Of them and no other In
sect would care.
The praying mantis Is always surprising
insect when one sees it for the first time, and
is surprising insect always, no matter how
many times one sees 1t.
Those intelligent little eyes seem to probe
into you, and the brain seems capable Of ask
ing questions. Is 1t any wonder that the Egyp-
tians, those wonderful. cruel people Of an
cient days, pictured the sphinx as sort Of
cross between q human and an insect and
heaven knows what else? II they had seen
the mantis, they might have made the sphinx
In It's likeness, and forever In the desert it
would have stood with poised arms. ready to
reach out and grasp the unwary traveller as
q choice morsel of food. Today we have no
sphinxes, but evil men and purposes are
always on our trails, and II we do not watch
: out. and pray, they win catch Us.