( cxvii ) 



and so convinced was I that the secretion serves as a protection 

 to these beetles that I mentioned my own observations in 

 order to confirm the view that they are a distasteful group, 

 when reading a paper on " Mimicry in Coleoptera," since 

 published in the Proceedings of the South London Entomo- 

 logical and Natural History Society. Although many other 

 groups of insects are at least equally distasteful, this is the 

 only one, so far as I know, in which a series of segmentallv- 

 arranged glands of the kind described have been met with 

 in the imago. But to return to Ichthyurus. In this genus, 

 the apertures of the glands are present as usual, but the last 

 pair, the largest of all, are placed at the end of those strong 

 outwardly and backwardly diverging processes of the eighth 

 tergite, which gives it that fish-tail resemblance from which 

 the name of the genus is derived. It is interesting to 

 think that while I had been looking upon these processes as 

 a battery provided to meet the assault of enemies, Mr. Baker 

 seemed to see in them the arms with which the male is 

 accustomed to embrace the female. But, strange to say, I 

 am not certain that we were not both right. The processes 

 are well developed in all the species of the genus and in both 

 sexes ; but they are more fully developed- in the male, in which 

 sex also they sometimes have a sharply curved point or tooth 

 at or near the apex, and in such cases the glandular aperture 

 is to be found not quite at the apex, but very near to it. They 

 are in most cases fixed pieces continuous with the rest of the 

 tergite of the eighth segment and only movable with the tergite 

 as a whole, and this is the condition in the sj^ecies referred to 

 and figured by Mr. Baker. In one species, however, namely 

 /. apicalis,* Mots., the male processes take on the form of a 

 pair of forceps, like those of an earwig, with the arms curving 

 inwards and coming in contact behind. Having examined 

 them with a view to finding out whether they were movable 

 from side to side, I found this to be the case, to some limited 

 extent, at least, and that they had all the appearance of being 

 articulated at the base ; so it seems to me impossible to doubt 

 that the fixed lateral prolongations of the eighth dorsal plate 

 met with in the other species have here become so far modi- 

 * — forcipiger, Gestro. 



