Packard.] 
INSECTS AS MIMICS. 
287 
transmitted through different sources resulting in families 
whose distinguishing marks are based on the primordial 
traits united in the same insect, but now scattered in differ¬ 
ent families. For example, the raptorial fore leg and form 
of the head of the singular neuropterous insect, Miama, the 
peculiar veining of the wings, form characters now existing 
in two very different families. 
Just as the embryo dog passes through a fish and a reptile 
stage before attaining its canine physiognomy, have the 
Neuroptera of the present day, in the process of building up 
new groups based on a modification of a single character, 
thrown aside the characters united in the more embryonic 
and primitive types. We would thus expect to find among 
the fossil insects the most startling anticipations of types 
not yet called into existence. The scanty paleontological 
record we have shows that the grasshoppers and their allies 
appeared after the Neuroptera; that the bugs (Hemiptera) 
appeared still later; that the moths and butterflies were very 
late in their arrival; that the flies probably preceded the 
Hymenoptera, and that the bees and wasps, the most highly 
developed structurally and intellectually of all insects, were 
the latest to be developed. It is a startling fact that the 
white ants which foreshadow so wonderfully the true ants, 
appear in great force in the coal formation, while the ants 
do not occur fossil before the Tertiary period. Now as an 
example of mimicry, any one ignorant of the geological 
record would regard the case of the white ants as one of 
the best, but the fact is the white atots were nearly as perfect, 
and doubtless as wonderful in their colonizing instincts in 
the Carboniferous period as in the age of man. Clearly, 
then, “mimicry” in the sense of being a factor in the origin 
of species does not as a rule exist, though there may be 
exceptions, and it is not improbable that a large proportion 
of so-called mimics are so by virtue of their similar physical 
surroundings. There have been cycles of creation, as if the 
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