1918 ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 75 



little pill-boxes; I then turned the captives loose into a large cardboard box with 

 a slab of glass over the top. In a quarter of an hour I had secured eighteen 

 mating pairs in my insect Agapemone. 



While watching the movements of these little beings I found myself curiously 

 reminded of animals we usually reckon far higher in the scale of creation. For 1 

 observed the most diminutive male in this assemblage — a perfect Lilliputian — 

 having evidently singled out his mate, make a bee-line for the largest female in 

 sight; and, to complete the analogy, his suit prospered and he presently waltzed 

 away like the hero of Hans Breitmann's party with the Matilda Jane of 

 Brobdingnag. Traces of this same eccentricity of preference, it is whispered, have 

 been found among human beings; nay, specimens have actually been collected by 

 anthropologists and transferred to their cabinets, pinned and labelled " Atavism " ; 

 poor hapless freaks of human frailty, caught like Ares and Aphrodite in the meshes 

 of a science as pitiless as the art of Hephaestus, and exposed in all the nakedness 

 and shame of cold print to the inextinguishable laughter of the Olympians and of 

 their fellowmen. 



Having now absolute proof of a genuine species, male and female, I pro- 

 ceeded to take up some points that I had left in abeyance last year. Among the 

 letters received while searching for M. gazellula I had had a very courteous note 

 from Chas. W. Leng, in which he offered to send me his specimens of the beetle 

 for the CQmparative study I had been minded to make of these two Dromios. Since 

 that letter of his in 1916 I had found that Mr. Leng was as deeply committed as 

 Dr. Hamilton and Prof. Wickham to the heresy that my capture was the male of 

 LeConte and Horn's M. gazellula, Hald. In July last I, therefore, wrote to Mr. 

 Leng suggesting that I should send him five or six specimens (male and female) 

 of my capture for him to compare with the material he had labelled M. gazellula. 



The evidence of these specimens proved quite convincing, and Mr. Leng has 

 prepared a paper called " Microclytus, a Correction." In the course of it occurs a 

 most interesting passage which records how the confusion first arose. It appears 

 that Mr. Leng had in his collection two specimens from Canada labelled M. 

 gazellula, and, when comparing notes sometime in the eighties with Dr. Horn, 

 found in the latter's collection two specimens from New England labelled 

 M. gazellula: he then noticed that his insect differed from Dr. Horn's in the pro- 

 portion of its antennal joints 2-4; the beetles were otherwise so entirely alike that 

 neither collector suspected the presence of two distinct species, and both agreed that 

 the Canadian specimens must be males and the New England ones females of 

 M. gazellula, Hald. They thereupon exchanged each of them one specimen with 

 the other! And this was the fons et origo malorum; to it may be traced the 

 sinking to a synonym of LeConte's M. gihhulus from Lake Superior, and the 

 subsequent identification of all captures made of either insect as M. gazellula, 

 Hald., male and female. 



In September last I sent some pairs of my capture to Mr. Charles Liebeck, of 

 Philadelphia, and he is still at work on the evidence. Meantime he has made me 

 two communications which serve to support the contention made. First, that we 

 have unquestionably two quite distinct species to deal with, and that he has never 

 before seen two insects so essentially different correspond so closely in elyt.ral mark- 

 ings and external appearance ; and second, that he believes he has put his finger 

 on the very source of the whole error, for in Dr. Horn's collection he finds the 

 specim ens labelled. M. gazellula. Raid., male and female, are one of them my insect 

 and the other LeConte and Horn's. This, fortunately, is quite independent testi- 

 mony, for Mr. Leng's paper is still unpublished, and I had made no mention of 

 its contents in writing to Philadelphia. 



