Mimicry Among Animals 



to vary, and favourable variations when not 

 accompanied by others that are unfavourable, 

 would certainly survive At one lime a little 

 step might be made in this direction, at another 

 time in that — a change of conditions might some- 

 times render useless that which it had taken 

 ages to produce — great and sudden physical 

 modifications might often produce the ex- 

 tinction of a race just as it was approaching 

 perfection, and a hundred checks of which we 

 can know nothing may have retarded the pro- 

 gress towards perfect adaptation; so that we 

 can hardly wonder at there being so few cases 

 in which a completely successful result has been 

 attained as shown by the abundance and wide 

 diffusion of the creatures so protected. 



[Here are given many detailed examples of 

 insects which gainfully mimic one another.] 



We will now adduce a few cases in which 

 beetles imitate other insects, and insects of 

 other orders imitate beetles. 



Charis melipona, a South American Longi- 

 corn of the family Necydalidae, has been so 

 named from its resemblance to a small bee of 

 the genus Melipona. It is one of the most re- 

 markable cases of mimicry, since the beetle 

 has the thorax and body densely hairy like 

 the bee, and the legs are tufted in a manner 

 most unusual in the order Colcoptera. Another 

 Longicorn, Odontoeera odyneroides, has the 

 abdomen banded with yellow, and constricted 

 at the base, and is altogether so exactly like 

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