Pacicard.] insects as MIMICS. 287 



transmitted through different sources resulting in families 

 whose distinguishing marks are based on the primordial 

 traits united in tlie same insect, but now scattered in differ- 

 ent families. For example, the raptorial fore leg and form 

 of the head of the singular neuropterous insect, Miama, the 

 peculiar veining of the Avings, form characters now existing 

 in two very different families. 



Just as the embryo dog passes through a fish and a reptile 

 stage before attaining its canine physiognomy, have the 

 Neuroptera of the j)resent day, in the process of building up 

 new groups based on a modification of a single character, 

 thrown aside the characters united in the more embryonic 

 and primitive t3'pes. We would thus expect to find among 

 the fossil insects the most startling anticipations of types 

 not yet called into existence. The scanty paleontological 

 record we have shows that the grasshoppers and their allies 

 appeared after the Neuroptera ; that the bugs (Hemiptera) 

 appeared still later ; tliat the moths and butterflies were very 

 late in their arrival ; that the flies probably preceded the 

 Ilymenoptera, and that the bees and wasps, the most highly 

 developed structurally and intellectually of all insects, were 

 the latest to be developed. It is a startling fact that the 

 white ants which foreshadow so wonderfully the true ants, 

 appear in great force in the coal formation, while tiie ants 

 do not occur fossil before the Tertiary period. Now as an 

 example of mimicry, any one ignorant of the geological 

 record would rcgai-d the case of the white ants as one of 

 the best, but the fiict is the white ants were nearly as perfect, 

 and doubtless as wonderful in their colonizing instincts in 

 the Carboniferous period as in the age of man. Clearly, 

 then, "mimicry" in the sense of being a factor in the origin 

 of species does not as a rule exist, thougli there may be 

 exceptions, and it is not improbable that a large i)roportion 

 of so-called mimics are so by virtue of their similar physical 

 surroundings. There have been cycles of creation, as if the 



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