of new Fig-Insects. 13 



by Sir Walter Elliot and now in the British Museum — 

 some difficulty was experienced as to discriminating 

 between friend and foe ; and thus, partly from this 

 circumstance, partly also in consequence of certain 

 fortuitous complications to which I shall presently ad- 

 vert, but mainly perhaps from the paucity of available 

 materials, the subject has remained, as it were, in abey- 

 ance for a considerable period, during which the oppor- 

 tunities for prosecuting researches in a wider field were 

 unaccountably neglected, as recently testified by Dr. 

 Paul Meyer's elaborate Treatise on Fig-insects (' Zur 

 Naturgeschichte der Feigeninsecten,' Mitth. d. Zool. 

 Station z. Neapel, Bd. hi., Heft 4, 1882), citing a long 

 list of various species of Ficus which have afforded 

 evidence of the presence of such inmates ; and, in fact, 

 it must be incontestably evident that their name is 

 legion, and their species a multiple of those hitherto 

 recorded, disseminated under divers controlling influences 

 through the lapse of ages, and bursting upon us as 

 startling phenomena from time to time. 



When, moreover, we consider the life-history of these 

 diminutive races, — diversified in astounding variety in 

 some of their most remarkable structural characters, 

 while themselves attaining their maximum development 

 within the seed-vessels of a dwarf-fig not exceeding, in 

 many instances, half an inch in diameter, and consti- 

 tuting a little world of its own, which many of its 

 inmates, blind from their birth, are destined never to 

 quit, living in perpetual obscurity within this secluded 

 domicile where organs of vision would be of no avail, 

 but exercising their appointed functions in obedience to 

 a common law regulating the just proportions of each 

 race, — a tale of wonderment is told by these pigmy 

 prodigies which affords a striking illustration of that 

 dictum which our French entomological brethren have 

 adopted as their motto, " Natura maxime miranda in 

 mini mis /" 



In explanation of the fortuitous circumstances afore- 

 said, I must needs recite the several gradations whereby, 

 almost imperceptibly, step by step, and without any 

 deliberate intention, this federal dependency of the 

 CunipitUe, whilom unchallenged as such, became in- 

 cidentally transferred to a hostile tribe, whose title — 

 illegitimately acquired, as shown in the sequel — it be- 

 hoves us to scrutinise, as the first step towards restoring 

 this exiled community to its rightful inheritance. 



