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XIII. Cases of Protective Besemhlancc, Mimicry, etc., in the 

 British Coleoptera. By Horace St. John K. 



DoNISTHORPE, F.Z.S. 



" So may the outward shows be least themselves ) 

 The world is still deceiv'd with ornament." 



Merchant of Venice. 



[Read June 5th, 1901.] 



In writing a paper on this interesting subject it is not 

 necessary for me to explain what is meant by " mimicry," 

 " protective resemblance," or any of the phases connected 

 with them, the work of such men as Bates, Fritz Miiller, 

 Wallace, Trimen, Melclola, Poulton, and others having 

 made them household words to all students of natural 

 history. In this paper I merely wish to bring forward 

 all such cases as appear to me to occur in our British 

 Coleoptera, and by doing so I hope to call attention to 

 a subject which has been much neglected by Coleopterists. 

 A certain amount of work has of course been done in 

 Exotic Coleoptera, for instance Mr. Gahan's paper on 

 mimetic resemblances between species of the Coleopterous 

 genera Lema and Diabrotica in our transactions (Trans. 

 Ent. Soc, 1891, p. 367), Mr. Guy A. K. Marshall's and 

 Mr. R. Shelford's papers in the Reports of the British 

 Association at Bradford 1900, pp. 793 and 795 respectively. 

 Furthermore Wallace, Poulton, and others record various 

 cases in some of their writings, but the subject has not been 

 as systematically dealt with as it has in the Lepidoptera. It 

 seems to me a great pity that collectors send home beetles 

 which are evidently mimics of ants, or wasps, etc., as the 

 case may be, but without the species mimicked, or notes 

 on the subject; whereas how much more valuable would 

 be their consignments if they paid more attention to this 

 branch of entomology. Men like Bates, Wallace and Belt 

 never failed to note and record such interesting cases, 

 because they were always on the look out for them. I 

 also think it is a mistake that museums, even when the 

 " mimics" and ''mimicked" are sent home together, at 

 once separate them into different cabinets, thus rendering 

 the work of the future student of insect bionomics more 

 TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND. 1901. — PART III. (SEPT.) 



