MIMICRY. 309 



with Infusoria. They had thus become almost complete vege- 

 tarians." * 



Insects. — Numerous instances will occur to most entomo- 

 logists, and are to be found scattered in entomological literature. 

 We will again quote from other writers : " Many caterpillars, 

 though plants are their proper food, will occasionally exhibit 

 depravity of taste, and if kept with their own kind or with the 

 larvae of other moths, may turn cannibal, and make away 

 with the company. Similarly the large green Grasshopper will 

 eat insects smaller than itself, as well as its ordinary vegetable 

 diet." f The household beetle pest Dermestes, whose larvse not 

 only prey on flitches of bacon, meat in larders, bladders covering 

 jam-pots, and even books and papers, " have sometimes actually 

 imitated the example of Anobium, and bored into wood, feeding 

 on the timber as they advanced." { In various places, such as 

 parts of India, for example, Mosquitos are found in swarms in 

 spots never visited by human beings, and in which there are no 

 large mammals. It has been suggested that, failing to obtain 

 blood, Mosquitos support themselves on the juices of plants, but 

 no observations in support of this have been recorded. § Even 

 the sexes in some insects are totally diverse in the nature of 

 their food. In the Diptera, of the families Culicidce and Tabanidce, 

 according to Prof. Westwood, " it is only the females of these 

 insects which are blood-suckers, the males being found on flowers; 

 and Meigen discovered that the mouth of the latter sex is desti- 

 tute of mandibles." || 



Mankind. — Even man can acquire a partiality for salt or 

 brackish water. Barrow relates that an old man in the Bokke- 

 veld of South Africa, " who from his infancy till a few years past 

 had lived in Zwartland, never missed an opportunity of sending 

 thither a few bottles to be filled with the briny water for his own 

 particular use ; the pure stream of the mountain, as he asserted, 

 not being able to quench his thirst." % The South Australians 



* Eimer, 'Organic Evolution,' Eng. transl., p. 108. 



f Badenoch, 'Romance of the Insect World,' p. 45. 



\ A. E. Butler, ' Our Household Insects,' p. 25. 



§ R. J. Pocock, ' Roy. Nat. Hist.,' vol. vi. p. 52. 



|| ' Modern Classification of Insects,' vol. ii. p. 541. 



IT ' Travels in the Interior of Southern Africa,' vol. i. p. 360. 



