and Ancestral Form of Ilyrmecophiloiis Coleoptera. 411 



in nests (of F. rufa) which I have met with in Yorkshire " 

 (Trans. Ent. Soc. Lond., 1844, p. 101). 



Shipp recorded (E. M. M., 1892, p. 288) finding two 

 coccoons in a nest of the wood-ant on Shotover Hill, near 

 Oxford, and on opening one of them he found a perfect 

 insect in it. 



Professor Poulton took several larvae and a perfect insect 

 in a nest of Formica rufa, in the New Forest, which he sent 

 to me, and I introduced them into my observation nest of 

 that ant, and bred perfect insects from these larvae. (See 

 "Myrmecophilous habits oiCetonia aurata" Ent. Rec, 1904, 

 p. 301.) Cetonia floricola is truly myrmecophilous in its 

 early stages, and I think the study of C. aurata, when 

 found with ants, shows us exactly how the former became 

 so. These beetles are too hard for the ants to injure, the 

 skin of the larvae also is too tough, and they brush off the 

 ants by burying themselves in the debris of the nest when 

 attacked, as I have shown. With floricola, Mr. Lloyd 

 recorded that when at Rannoch, he had exposed their 

 larvae, they were fiercely attacked by the ants. (E. M. M., 

 1892, p. 310). 



There are of course other records of non-m3T:'mecophilous 

 Coleoptera with ants, most of them no doubt of chance 

 occurrence, but some more frequently, still enough has 

 been written here to illustrate our subject. In conclusion 

 I should like to say that I am collecting all the British 

 records of species found with ants, and shall be much 

 obliged if any one can tell me of any of those species 

 mentioned here which I have omitted. 



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