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Show 1900.] INSECTS OF THE " SKEAT EXPEDITION." 849 then botanist to the Expedition, together with a spray of the flowers and leaves of an acacia among which he had found it. The flowers of this tree are very much like those of the common Mimosa, but larger in size aud of a far less brilliant shade of yellow7. The leaves are much divided. Mr. Yapp tells m e that he found the specimen on a tree uear the edge of a buff ulo-lawn across the Kelantan river opposite Aring, about eleven o'clock in the forenoon. Even in the dim light of the mosque in which we w7ere then .staying the insect was very inconspicuous among the flowers; and when it was taken out into the brilliant sunshine it completely disappeared among the shadows cast by them aud the leaves. The dark bars on its body and limbs were slightly wider than the spaces between the pinnules of the acacia-leaves, and the prominences on the ventral surface of the abdomen were of the shape, though not of the colour, of the prominent parts on the unopened flower-buds ; for it will be noticed that the buds were green, while the structures on the insect's body were pale pink. These prominences were conspicuous ; but the lights and shadows among the feathery leaves and fur-like flowers were so confused that a difference in colour detracted little from the similitude between the abdomen, cut into as it was by the black bars which w7ere conspicuous on its edges but interrupted iu its middle line, and the distal extremity of one of the racemose inflorescences of the acacia. The insect and the flower had not a single colour in common intrinsically; and yet, under given conditions of climate, the colours of the tw7o became indistinguishable from one another. The Malays at Aring called this insect Striped Kanchong ; but the name was evidently invented for the occasion. The plant on which it was found being a tree and not a shrub, it was much more liable to escape detection, even had the acacia been as common as tbe " Rhododendron." There are plenty of similar acacias in Kelantan, and there is no reason why the Mantis should confine itself to one species, for its colour and form are adapted for concealment among any flowers and leaves of this peculiar type. The possession of leaf or petal-like expansions on the limbs is a peculiarity shared by many Mantids with leaf-like insects of different groups, but as a rule their outline is not so regular as it is in the case of this species and of Hymenopus. With regard to the origin of such structures and their primitive function, it is worth while noticing their rudimentary condition, whether it be a specific or merely a pupal character, in forms like this Striped Harpagid from Kelantan. It cannot be said that in this case they give any direct aid in concealing the insect by resembling petals of a flower or any other vegetable organ. But, especially where w e get the extremes of light and shade, any little irregularity of outline or projection from the surface of the body of an animal may give it a distinct aid in hiding itself. This is truer in the case of the smaller invertebrates than it is in that of vertebrates, though the orinciple is w7ell exemplified by many fish, and not a few lizards, that live among terrestrial and aquatic plants. A large nocturnal |