October 19—I wonder how many people experts perhaps in crossword puzzles, know there is such an English word as "Ootheca," that it means an egg-case (in the sense that we use the word bird's-nest), and is pronounced something like, "Oh-o-the-ka"? I have recently been examining many such "nests" made by the Praying Mantis among my fruit trees it Weihaiwei, and I can say they are alme without exception the most marcello examples of natural ingenuity. I found daily several examples of (a) the female Manti: settling into position to create her nest (whicl she usually does at night), (b) newly-mad nests still soft beneath the hardened shell, anc (c) many hard nests, firmly set all through and ready to resist the coldest winter, It would be impossible for me to state in a few word: the exact construction of such a nest (or should I say Ootheca?), but I will try to des-cribo its main principles. The Mantis i: provided internally with a liquid which she whips into a sort of foam as she deposits hei eggs in its midst with mechanical precision: the foam is of such a nature that it harden: rapidly from the outside inwards, and the completed nest looks something like a snail-shell, about the size and shape of a date pressed down on tree-trunk or branch: th hardened shell is wind-and-weather-proof, anc the imprisoned air-bubbles act as a non-con ductor of heat....either coming or going. Anc this is the point I want to get at. Did you cv eat a "Baked Alaska pudding"? It is an ice-cream surrounded by a mass of beaten egi and baked in a quick oven: you put you. spoon into the omelette and dig out the ice-cold core....a culinary triumph invented, 1 believe, by an American chef: who had studied the thermic principles advanced by Rumford. "Well that is just what our old friend the Praying Mantis does when she lays her eggs... but in reverse: she surrounds them in foam to keep the cold out and the heat in. Quite simple when you come to think of it,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.