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 ' 

 {Clytvs arietis) m 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 Kussel 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.' 

 In BurcheU's 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 BurcheU 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 Animals, London, 1890, 249, 250. 

 I2 



