MIMICRY RECORDED BY BURCHELL 115 



offers one of the best-known, although by no 

 means one of the most perfect, examples. The 

 appearance of the well - known * wasp - beetle ' 

 (Clytits arietis) in the living state is sufficiently 

 suggestive to prevent the great majority of people 

 from touching it. The dead specimen is less 

 convincing, and when I showed a painting of it 

 to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace in 1889 he doubted 

 whether it was an example of Mimicry at all. 

 I replied that he would not question the inter- 

 pretation if he had noticed the beetle in life ; 

 and he at once recalled the movements of allied 

 forms in the Eastern Archipelago, and admitted 

 the mimetic resemblance. In fact, the slender, 

 wasp-like legs of the beetle are moved in a rapid, 

 somewhat jerky manner, very different from the 

 usual stolid coleopterous stride, but remarkably 

 like the active movements of a wasp, which 

 always seem to imply the perfection of training. 1 

 In BurchelTs Brazilian collection there is a nearly 

 allied species (Neoclytus curvatus) which appeal's 

 to be somewhat less wasp-like than the British 

 beetle. The specimen bears the number '1188', 

 and the date March 27, 1827, when Burchell was 

 collecting in the neighbourhood of St. Paulo. 

 Turning to the corresponding number in the 

 Brazilian notebook we find this record : ' It runs 

 rapidly like an ichneumon or wasp, of which it 

 has the appearance.' 



The formidable, well-defended ants are as freely 



1 Poulton, The Colours of Animal*, London, 1890, 249, 250. 

 I 2 



