286 HALF llOUKS WITH EN'SECTS. [Packard. 



mistaken for each other, and the wingless Atropos, or death 

 tick, reminds us of the louse. The ants have among the 

 Neuroptera their well known analogues, the Termites or 

 white ants. Like the true ants they live in large colonies, 

 and have wingless workers of two sorts. Now these and 

 certain peculiarities in structure, which place the white ants 

 at the head of the Neuroptera, are just those which make 

 them so much like the true ants, which are among the most 

 highly developed insects, ranking near the honey bee. 



From the facts here and elsewhere given it may be re- 

 garded as quite well proved, that some, if not the majority 

 of mimics among insects belong to groups, lovv^er in the or- 

 ganic scale than the insects they mimic. Moreover, the 

 paleontological record shows that the Neuroptera were the 

 Fig. 224. Fig. 2-35. 



Panorpa. Hepialus. 



first to appear. The fossil forms discovered were also S3^n- 

 thetic types, combining the characters of other neuropterous 

 and some orthopterous families. These fossil insects, it 

 should be ol)served, were remarkable "mimics," but we have 

 no proof that the living insects they resemble were then in 

 existence. Wo can only explain the matter by regarding 

 ihem as prophetic tj'pes, anticipating in nature the coming 

 of whole families and even orders of insects. They repre- 

 sent ancestral or stem forms, from which arose lines of de- 

 scent resulting in the present insect creation. The original 

 Devonian May fly-like insect, and the Xenoneura and Ilomo- 

 thetus, as well as the Carboniferous Miamia and Hemeristia 

 and Eugereon, possessed features which they have, perhaps, 



30 



