horus, Alcides), which are usually very
differently coloured, have species in the Philippines which mimic the
Pachyrhynchi; and there are also several longicorn beetles (Aprophata,
Doliops, Acronia, and Agnia), which also mimic them. Besides these,
there are some longicorns and cetonias which reproduce the same colours
and markings; and there is even a cricket (Scepastus pachyrhynchoides),
which has taken on the form and peculiar coloration of these beetles in
order to escape from enemies, which then avoid them as uneatable.[111]
The figures on the opposite page exhibit several other examples of these
mimicking insects.

Innumerable other cases of mimicry occur among tropical insects; but we
must now pass on to consider a few of the very remarkable, but much
rarer instances, that are found among the higher animals.

_Mimicry among the Vertebrata._

Perhaps the most remarkable cases yet known are those of certain
harmless snakes which mimic poisonous species. The genus Elaps, in
tropical America, consists of poisonous snakes which do not belong to
the viper family (in which are included the rattlesnakes and most of
those which are poisonous), and which do not possess the broad
triangular head which characterises the latter. They have a peculiar
style of coloration, consisting of alternate rings of red and black, or
red, black, and yellow, of different widths and grouped in various ways
in the different species; and it is a style of coloration which does not
occur in any other group of snakes in the world. But in the same regions
are found three genera of harmless snakes, belonging to other families,
some few species of which mimic the poisonous Elaps, often so exactly
that it is with difficulty one can be distinguished from the other. Thus
Elaps fulvius in Guatemala is imitated by the harmless Pliocerus
equalis; Elaps corallinus in Mexico is mimicked by the harmless
Homalocranium semicinctum; and Elaps lemniscatus in Brazil is copied by
Oxyrhopus trigeminus; while in other parts of South America similar
cases of mimicry occur, sometimes two harmless species imitating the
same poisonous snake.

A few other instances of mimicry in this group have been recorded. There
is in South Africa an egg-eating snake (Dasypeltis scaber), which has
neither fangs nor teeth, yet it is very like the Berg adder (Clothos
atropos), and when alarmed renders itself still more like by flattening
out its head and darting forward with a his