in zoology, a genus of insects belonging to the order of hemiptera, the characters of which are these: The head is unsteady, or appears from its continual nodding motion to be slightly attached to the thorax: The mouth is armed with jaws, and furnished with filiform palpi: The antennae are fætaceous: The four wings are membranaceous, and wrapped round the body; the under ones folded: The anterior or first pair of feet are compressed, armed on the under side with teeth like a saw, and terminated by a single nail or crochet; the four hindermost are gregarious, or formed rather for advancing slowly than for performing quick movements: The thorax is extended to a considerable length, narrow, and throughout of equal size. The name *mantis*, given to this genus, denotes *deathayer*; because it has been imagined, that this insect, by stretching out its fore feet, divined and pointed out those things that were asked of it. The insect often rests on its four hinder legs only, and holding the two fore ones raised up, joins them together, which has occasioned its being called by the people of Languedoc, where it is very common, *pregadieu*, as if it prayed to God. The country folks moreover maintain, that this creature shows the way when asked, because it stretches those same fore legs sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left: and indeed it is looked upon as an insect almost sacred, that must not be hurt. Its colour is all over of a brownish green. The young ones have more of the green, the old more of the brown, cast. It deposits its eggs collected into a hemispherical parcel, flat on one side. There are in the parcel two rows of oblong eggs placed transversely, and one row of shells placed longitudinally, in form of a roof, one over the other, which cover the joining of the two rows of eggs. The whole parcel is light, and as it were composed of very thin parchment.

There are 53 species of this genus. In plate CCLXXIX is represented the gongylodes, the shape of which is extraordinary, being narrow and long. The head is small, flat, with two filiform short antennæ. On the sides of the head are situated two large polished eyes. The thorax is subelliptical, long, narrow, margined, with a longitudinal rising in the middle, and a transverse depression at one-third of its length. The elytra, which cover two thirds of the insect, are veined, reticulated, crossed one over the other, and cover the wings, which are veined, and diaphanous. The hinder legs are very long, the middle ones shorter; and the foremost pair of thighs are terminated with spines, the rest winged, as it were, with membranaceous lobes. The top of the head has the shape of an awl; it is membranaceous, often split in two at the extremity. It is an inhabitant of China.

The insects belonging to this genus, in their most perfect state, are generally of very beautiful green colours, which soon fade, and become the colour of dead leaves. Their elytra bearing so strong a resemblance to the leaves of some plants, have procured them the name of *walking leaves*.