as, Cubatao, near Santos. In the
note-book the record is as follows: "1141 Cimex. I collected this for a
Formica."

Some of the chief mimics of ants are the active little hunting spiders
belonging to the family Attidae. Examples have been brought forward
during many recent years, especially by my friends Dr and Mrs Peckham,
of Milwaukee, the great authorities on this group of Araneae. Here too
we find an observation of the mimetic resemblance recorded by Burchell,
and one which adds in the most interesting manner to our knowledge
of the subject. A fragment, all that is now left, of an Attid spider,
captured on June 30, 1828, at Goyaz, Brazil, bears the following note,
in this case on the specimen and not in the note-book: "Black... runs and
seems like an ant with large extended jaws." My friend Mr R.I. Pocock,
to whom I have submitted the specimen, tells me that it is not one of
the group of species hitherto regarded as ant-like, and he adds, "It is
most interesting that Burchell should have noticed the resemblance to an
ant in its movements. This suggests that the perfect imitation in shape,
as well as in movement, seen in many species was started in forms of an
appropriate size and colour by the mimicry of movement alone." Up to the
present time Burchell is the only naturalist who has observed an example
which still exhibits this ancestral stage in the evolution of mimetic
likeness.

Following the teachings of his day, Burchell was driven to believe that
it was part of the fixed and inexorable scheme of things that these
strange superficial resemblances existed. Thus, when he found other
examples of Hemipterous mimics, including one (Luteva macrophthalma)
with "exactly the manners of a Mantis," he added the sentence, "In the
genus Cimex (Linn.) are to be found the outward resemblances of insects
of many other genera and orders" (February 15, 1829). Of another
Brazilian bug, which is not to be found in his collection, and cannot
therefore be precisely identified, he wrote: "Cimex... Nature seems
to have intended it to imitate a Sphex, both in colour and the rapid
palpitating and movement of the antennae" (November 15, 1826). At the
same time it is impossible not to feel the conviction that Burchell felt
the advantage of a likeness to stinging insects and to aggressive ants,
just as he recognised the benefits conferred on desert plants by spines
and by concealment. Such an interpretation of mimicry was perfectly
consi