66 
NATURAL SELECTION 
hi 
wonderful accuracy the bark of the trees they habitually fre- 
quent; but it differs totally in outward appearance from 
every one of its allies, having taken upon itself the exact 
shape and colouring of a globular Corynomalus, a little stink- 
ing beetle with clubbed antennae. It is curious to see how 
these clubbed antennae are imitated by an insect belonging to 
a group with long slender antennae. The sub-family Aniso- 
cerinae, to which Cyclopeplus belongs, is characterised by all 
its members possessing a little knob or dilatation about the 
middle of the antennae. This knob is considerably enlarged 
in 0. batesii, and the terminal portion of the antennae beyond 
it is so small and slender as to be scarcely visible, and thus 
an excellent substitute is obtained for the short clubbed 
antennae of the Corynomalus. Erythroplatis corallifer is 
another curious broad flat beetle, that no one would take for 
a Longicorn, since it almost exactly resembles Cephalodonta 
spinipes, one of the commonest of the South American 
Hispidae ; and what is still more remarkable, another Longi- 
corn pf a distinct group, Streptolabis hispoides, was found 
by Mr. Bates, which resembles the same insect with equal 
minuteness, — a case exactly parallel to that among butterflies, 
where species of two or three distinct groups mimicked the 
same Heliconia. Many of the soft-winged beetles (Malaco- 
derms) are excessively abundant in individuals, and it is 
probable that they have some similar protection, more 
especially as other species often strikingly resemble them. A 
Longicorn beetle, Pseciloderma terminale, found in Jamaica, is 
coloured exactly in the same way as a Lycus (one of the 
Malacoderms) from the same island. Eroschema poweri, a 
Longicorn from Australia, might certainly be taken for one of 
the same group, and several species from the Malay Islands 
are equally deceptive. In the Island of Celebes I found one 
of this group, having the whole body and elytra of a rich 
deep blue colour, with the head only orange ; and in company 
with it an insect of a totally different family (Eucnemidae) 
with identically the same coloration, and of so nearly the 
same size and form as to completely puzzle the collector on 
every fresh occasion of capturing them. I have been recently 
informed by Mr. Jenner Weir, who keeps a variety of small 
birds, that none of them will touch our common “soldiers 
