xvi EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION 



worker, as will be realized by any naturalist who sees 

 what the Oxford Blattidce. became in four years from 

 the autumn of 1905 ; and it must be remembered that 

 all the time he was helping the Department in many 

 other ways, particularly in the arrangement and cata- 

 loguing of the library. 



Of all the memoirs which he wrote Shelford was, I 

 think, most interested in that "On Mimicry amongst the 

 Blattidce" (P.Z.S., 1912, p. 358) a subject on which he 

 had reflected and had been accumulating material for 

 some years ; one, moreover, which combines two depart- 

 ments of natural history Systematics and Bionomics 

 departments as wide apart as the poles, but affording 

 each other mutual support, and both equally dear to 

 him. It was also a special delight to him to show the 

 high interest and in many species the extreme beauty of 

 the universally despised cockroaches. It is a pathetic 

 circumstance that the publication of this long-looked-for 

 paper was nearly coincident with its author's death. 



In addition to the researches on insects which formed 

 the main work of his life, Shelford was a keen and 

 enthusiastic student of Anthropology, as the concluding 

 chapters of this book will abundantly testify. 



He was especially interested in Bornean Tatu, and 

 wrote, in conjunction with Dr. C. Hose, an important 

 memoir on the subject, 1 of which the greater part is 

 reproduced in Hose and McDougall's " Pagan Tribes of 

 Borneo," vol. ii. p. 245. 



When three years old Shelford contracted tubercular 

 1 Journ. Anthrop. Insi., vol. XXXVI., n. Ser. IX (1906), pp. 60-91. 



