( vii ) 



glad I didn't catch that beastly fly : he looks like a stinger,' 

 when something made me look again, and I saw what it was. 

 It is curious my making the same mistake twice. It is a 

 most elegant case of mimicry ; yet when the beetle is in the 

 hand, it seems impossible to take it for anything but what 

 it is. When it settles it curves the ends of its antenntB out 

 and keeps them quivering just like an Ichneumon. There is 

 a metallic sheen on the elytra just as you get on dark-winged 

 flies, and the white spots on them seem to suggest an annulated 

 body underneath the wings ; yet the resemblance is not in 

 the details of the markings, but in the whole appearance of 

 the insect." 



The President remarked that the appeai-ance of the beetles 

 entirely justified Mr. Andrewes' statement. No one, looking 

 at the specimens in the cabinet, could imagine that during 

 life they would suggest so strongly the appearance of a 

 Hymenopterous insect. The allied species G. iresine (Pascoe), 

 from Borneo, was described by Mr. E. W. C. Shelford, M.A., 

 as a good mimic, and in this case the resemblance is 

 tolerably obvious even in the dead specimen. Mr. Shelford 

 says of it : " The middle third of the elytra is brown, shading 

 anteriorly into blue, posteriorly into greyish-white ; the model 

 is a small blue Ilylotoraa, and when the wings are laid back 

 the resemblance between the two species is sti-iking ; the blue 

 anterior third of the beetle's elytra corresponds to the posterior 

 part of the Hylotomas thorax, the brown portion to the 

 abdomen with the superposed wings, the greyish posterior 

 third to the tips of the wings of the model, which project 

 beyond the end of the abdomen." (Pi-oc. Zool. Soc, 1902, 

 vol. ii, p. 240.) When the whole genus Glenea is examined, 

 the marked conspicuousness of some of the species suggests 

 that the mimetic resemblance displayed by others is MUllerian 

 or Synaposematic, rather than Batesian or Pseudaposematic. 

 The essential importance of a study of the living insect in 

 its normal environment, for the true interpretation of many 

 examples of mimicry, could hardly receive a better illustration 

 than by Mr, Andrewes' specimen accompanied by the notes 

 upon it. Many years ago (in 1889) the speaker had shown 

 a painting of the common English beetle, Clytus arietis, to Dr. 



