Relationship between certain West African Insects. 469 
fore-legs quite away from the plant. A few bites disposes 
of an Aphis and the larva then licks and cleans its legs, 
just as a Mantis does.” Mr. Kershaw found that the 
larvae, after having eaten one kind of Aphis, were quite 
ready to take others of a different kind, in this respect 
differmg from Mr. Lamborn’s Megalopalpus. Further- 
more, Mr. Kershaw has not observed Gerydus in the perfect 
state feeding upon the secretions of the Aphis or exploring 
them with its proboscis. With these slight exceptions the 
procedure of Gerydus, as described by Mr. Kershaw, and 
Megalopalpus seems to be nearly the same and points to a 
close affinity between these Oriental and Ethiopian forms. 
The late Col. C. T. Bingham in the “ Fauna of British 
India—Butterflies,” vol. 11, 1907, pp. 287-288, describes 
and figures an observation by Col. H. J. W. Barrow, who 
states that Allotinus horsfieldi, Moore, “settles over a 
mass of Aphides and then tickles them with its proboscis, 
just as ants do with their antennae, and seems to feed on 
their exudations.” The figure represents the butterfly 
clasping an Aphid between its two anterior legs. Barrow 
states that the butterfly was not attacked by ants. Allo- 
tonus belongs to the Gerydinae and is the genus next to 
Gerydus, the Oriental representative of the Ethiopian 
Megalopalpus. The observation was made at Maymyo, 
near Mandalay. Col. Barrow’s account has been con- 
firmed, except as regards the position of the anterior legs, 
by Mr. J. C. Moulton, Curator of the Sarawak Museum, 
Kuching, who showed the figure in Col. Bingham’s book to 
his Dyak collectors and has thus been able to record 
similar observations (Proc. Ent. Soc. 1910, pp. xxxviii-— 
xli) upon Allotinus nivalis, H. H. Druce, and an allied 
species. Moulton’s Dyak collector also observed A. 
horsfieldi attending ‘“ Heteropterous larvae?” but the 
group to which the latter have been assigned requires 
confirmation. 
A letter recently received from Mr. J. C. Moulton states 
that the same relationship between Lycaenids and Aphides 
was observed by the late Mr. R. Shelford in Borneo and 
also twice by the writer himself. Finally, in the same 
letter, Mr. Moulton records a recent observation still nearer 
to those of Mr. Lamborn in that the Homoptera were 
Membracidae :— 
“T watched some few months ago a group of ants, 
a Lycaenid belonging to the sub-fam. Gerydinae, and 
