( xlvii ) 



lying quite still as if dead, which we find among a con- 

 siderable number of groups (.Byrrhidm, Curcidionidx, etc.). 

 Such insects are often doubly protected : they escape both 

 by feigning death and also by their close resemblance to their 

 surroundings after they have fallen. I have come across the 

 very local and usually rare minute weevil, Ceuthorrhynchidius 

 daiosoni in numbers in the Isle of "Wight, on Plantago 

 coronopus, and found it impossible to discover them after they 

 had dropped, until thinking the danger over, they began to 

 bestir themselves. The common beetle Broscus cephalotes is 

 said to feign death, but I am inclined to place its curious 

 habit under the next heading. 



5. We do not appear to find among the Coleoptera many 

 definite instances of what I have usually considered to be 

 warning or scare attitudes proper, such as we find in the 

 Hickory Horned caterpillar of America, or in the Frilled Lizard 

 of Australia : the red pouches at the sides of the Melyrid 

 genus Malachius, which it extends when disturbed, may how- 

 ever be classed with the frilled or raised crests or extended 

 glands of these animals. Ocypus olens certainly looks very 

 formidable with tail cocked up, white glands exserted and 

 wide-open jaws, but I have been inclined to regard this as 

 merely a fighting attitude such as we find in Formica raja 

 when disturbed. Professor Poulton has however rightly 

 pointed out to me that all such attitudes are warning if the 

 enemy is experienced, but denote readiness for battle if it is 

 inexperienced, and that they therefore are correctly included 

 under warning attitudes : we find an analogy to these in the 

 display and noise and beating of spears against shields with 

 which the armies of barbarous nations or savages advance to 

 battle, and of which we read from the times of Xenophon 

 to the present day : they are meant to be partly terrifying 

 and partly a display of strength, but in every case to be more 

 or less deceptive and strategic : the fighting attitude of the 

 male swan when disturbed, the raising of the bristles and 

 the display of teeth of the dog when he sees an enemy, are 

 in part warning attitudes, and we find innumerable instances 

 throughout the animal kingdom. Lord Avebury (" Ants, Bees, 

 and Wasps," Intern. (Scientific Series, p. 16) speaks of the little 



