e; eight stinging
Hymenoptera; three or four parasitic Hymenoptera (Braconidae, a group
much mimicked and shown by some experiments to be distasteful); five
bugs (Hemiptera, a largely unpalatable group); three moths (Arctiidae
and Zygaenidae, distasteful families); one fly. In fact the whole
combination, except perhaps one Phytophagous, one Coprid and the
Longicorn beetles, and the fly, fall under the hypothesis of Muller
and not under that of Bates. And it is very doubtful whether these
exceptions will be sustained: indeed the suspicion of unpalatability
already besets the Longicorns and is always on the heels,--I should say
the hind tarsi--of a Phytophagous beetle.

This most remarkable group which illustrates so well the problem of
mimicry and the alternative hypotheses proposed for its solution, was,
as I have said, first described in 1902. Among the most perfect of
the mimetic resemblances in it is that between the Longicorn beetle,
Amphidesmus analis, and the Lycidae. It was with the utmost astonishment
and pleasure that I found this very resemblance had almost certainly
been observed by Burchell. A specimen of the Amphidesmus exists in his
collection and it bears "651." Turning to the same number in the
African Catalogue we find that the beetle is correctly placed among the
Longicorns, that it was captured at Uitenhage on Nov. 18, 1813, and that
it was found associated with Lycid beetles in flowers ("consocians cum
Lycis 78-87 in floribus"). Looking up Nos. 78-87 in the collection and
catalogue, three species of Lycidae are found, all captured on Nov. 18,
1813, at Uitenhage. Burchell recognised the wide difference in affinity,
shown by the distance between the respective numbers; for his catalogue
is arranged to represent relationships. He observed, what students of
mimicry are only just beginning to note and record, the coincidence
between model and mimic in time and space and in habits. We are
justified in concluding that he observed the close superficial likeness
although he does not in this case expressly allude to it.

One of the most interesting among the early observations of superficial
resemblance between forms remote in the scale of classification was made
by Darwin himself, as described in the following passage from his letter
to Henslow, written from Monte Video, Aug. 15, 1832: "Amongst the lower
animals nothing has so much interested me as finding two species of
elegantly coloured true Planaria inha