28 ilfr Goodman, On a striking instance of Mimicry, [Feb. 12, 



aculeate hymen optera, with a long sting, poison glands and bag. 

 It lives in powerful communities, and has a very hard resisting 

 armour. I have no means of judging of the comparative effective- 

 ness of the sting of this species and that of our hornet, except from 

 the exclamation of my Egyptian Reis, who, observing me catching 

 them from the sint trees, began to pick them off with his naked 

 fingers. I did not enquire the subsequent effect of the sting. 

 The interests of science now make me more regret that I did not 

 then make an enquiry which the interests of humanity should 

 have suggested. 



3. Turning to the imitated species we find the Fly, while it 

 has a proboscis which is a very effective weapon to thrust into the 

 soft bodies of small flies when held by its powerful limbs, yet it 

 may be held in the fingers with impunity, and neither attempts 

 nor can effect any wound with this weapon. The abdomen, too, is 

 soft and flexible, quite unlike the hard resisting body of the 

 hornet. In fact, this insect is quite without either offensive or 

 defensive armour for lawful warfare. He is an assassin who carries 

 a dagger wherewith he can do grievous mischief to his weak and 

 unprotected victims, but is quite unfit for combat ; while the 

 hornet is an armed warrior, disciplined, lance-bearing, and mail- 

 clad. As far as my experience goes the range of the Laphria is 

 not only within, but vastly within, the limits of the range of the 

 hornet. After some search I found three specimens in the crypts 

 of the British Museum ; they were unnamed and labelled as from 

 Syria. 



Altogether this is one of the most striking instances I have 

 met with. Of course I am aware that instances of mimicry abound 

 everywhere. We need not go to the Indian mountains or Bra- 

 zilian forests or even to Syria to find them. They are to be 

 detected as readily in our British fauna as in distant lands. It is 

 perhaps therefore necessary to apologize for bringing a single 

 instance of so common a phenomenon under your notice. I have 

 done so for this reason. Though instances of mimicry are nume- 

 rous they are in most instances masked, interfered with, and 

 modified by antagonistic tendencies which render them question- 

 able. We need therefore a few indisputable instances to establish 

 the theory. We then should inquire into the causes or conditions 

 of the strictness of the similitude in these few instances, and so 

 obtain the key to the more complicated cases. Did time permit I 

 think I could show from a 'priori considerations that the sunilitude 

 in this case was likely to be close. Also that in other cases derived 

 from our own fauna — cases which I am now collecting — that 

 though they are equally genuine they are not likely to be so close, 

 though they are more effective on account of the modification of 

 verisimilitude. But the whole question is so complicated and 



