( 677 ) 



XIV. The Colour-groups of the Hawaiian Wasps, etc. By 

 R. C. L. Perkins, D.Sc, M.A., Jesus College, 

 Oxford. 



[Read October 16th, 1912.] 



[In the autuma of 1911 I had the opportunity of discussing 

 the subject of this memoir with Dr. Perkins during a too 

 brief visit paid by him to Oxford. The discussion, thus 

 begun, was continued with some energy on both sides, in 

 a correspondence which only ended when Dr. Perkins sailed 

 for Honolulu in November 1911. In the course of our 

 correspondence he sent me a manuscript note-book, written 

 about 1907-8, as part of his Introduction to the ' Fauna 

 Hawaiiensis," now in the press. The facts and inferences 

 concerning the present condition and past history of these 

 Colour-groups seemed to me of such fundamental import- 

 ance in the study of mimicry and indeed of evolution, that 

 it appeared most desirable to publish the supplementary 

 information and the further conclusions scattered through 

 the letters. Dr. Perkins consented, and the following 

 paper is the result. In order to understand the nature of 

 the discussion, it has been necessary to quote passages 

 and sometimes consecutive paragraphs from the note-book 

 which will soon be published as the Introduction. For this 

 free use of the manuscript I received the kind consent of 

 Dr. David Sharp, F.R.S., Editor of the " Fauna Hawaiiensis." 

 It must be clearly understood that the quotations are 

 from the manuscript and not from the printed pages of 

 the Introduction itself, and that some slight difference 

 between the two accounts is to be looked for, owing to 

 Dr. Perkins' final revision for the press. I have limited 

 these quotations to the minimum quantity necessary to 

 preserve continuity and to explain the letters, bearing in 

 mind the inconvenience of printing the same passages 

 twice over in two publications. No quotations from the 

 note-book appear later than page 690, and in all the 

 earlier part of the paper, where they occupy a large propor- 

 tion of the pages, they are clearly discriminated from 

 passages extracted from the letters, the latter being 



TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND. 1912. — PART IV. (FEB.) ZZ2 



