NATURAL SELECTION 



wonderful accuracy the bark of the trees they habitually fre- 

 quent; but it differs totally in outward appearance from 

 every one of its allies, having taken upon itself the exact 

 shape and colouring of a globular Corynomalus, a little stink- 

 ing beetle with clubbed antennae. It is curious to see how 

 these clubbed antennae are imitated by an insect belonging to 

 a group with long slender antennas. The sub-family Aniso- 

 cerinae, to which Cyclopeplus belongs, is characterised by all 

 its members possessing a little knob or dilatation about the 

 middle of the antennse. This knob is considerably enlarged 

 in C. batesii, and the terminal portion of the antennas beyond 

 it is so small and slender as to be scarcely visible, and thus 

 an excellent substitute is obtained for the short clubbed 

 antennae of the Corynomalus. Erythroplatis corallifer is 

 another curious broad flat beetle, that no one would take for 

 a Longicorn, since it almost exactly resembles Cephalodonta 

 spinipes, one of the commonest of the South American 

 Hispidse ; and what is still more remarkable, another Longi- 

 corn of a distinct group, Streptolabis hispoides, was found 

 by Mr. Bates, which resembles the same insect with equal 

 minuteness, a case exactly parallel to that among butterflies, 

 where species of two or three distinct groups mimicked the 

 same Heliconia. Many of the soft- winged beetles (Malaco- 

 derms) are excessively abundant in individuals, and it is 

 probable that they have some similar protection, more 

 especially as other species often strikingly resemble them. A 

 Longicorn beetle, Paeciloderma terminale, found in Jamaica, is 

 coloured exactly in the same way as a Lycus (one of the 

 Malacoderms) from the same island. Eroschema poweri, a 

 Longicorn from Australia, might certainly be taken for one of 

 the same group, and several species from the Malay Islands 

 are equally deceptive. In the Island of Celebes I found one 

 of this group, having the whole body and elytra of a rich 

 deep blue colour, with the head only orange; and in company 

 with it an insect of a totally different family (Eucnemidae) 

 with identically the same coloration, and of so nearly the 

 same size ' and form as to completely puzzle the collector on 

 every fresh occasion of capturing them. I have been recently 

 informed by Mr. Jenner Weir, who keeps a variety of small 

 birds, that none of them will touch our common "soldiers 



