210 THE NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [i, 5. sept. 1905 



rest. The Asiatic leaf-butterfly ( Kallima ) is quite familiar in 

 museums, and from pictures in nature books ; but our own hedge- 

 rows provide sufficiently good example among the comma-butter- 

 flies (Grapta) and others. It has further been observed that in 

 numerous instances different species of butterflies resemble one 

 another ; and when this is so, usually one of the pair is apparently 

 protected from the attacks of birds by its nauseous taste. It is 

 not necessary to go into further details about protective coloration 

 and mimicry — there are plenty of available discussions of these 

 matters — but we may say at once that those who have paid most 

 attention to these phenomena believe that they result from the 

 action of natural selection preserving those individual butterflies 

 which most resemble their surroundings, or most closely resemble 

 species which are recognized as inedible. By a succession of 

 such choices, extending over a long period, the butterfly-type is 

 supposed to have been gradually altered, until the results that we 

 see today were produced. Various modifications of the theory 

 thus briefly outlined have been proposed, but all depend in the 

 main upon the assumption that butterflies are habitually eaten by 

 birds — so much so as to make the avoidance of such a catastrophe 

 one of the chief cares, as it were, of butterfly existence. 



Now comes Dr. Packard and asks, are butterflies eaten by 

 birds/ It is admitted, of course, that birds do sometimes eat 

 butterflies; but do they do so habitually? If butterflies are in no 

 more danger from birds, the world over, than men are from lions 

 and tigers, let us say, then do not these theories of mimicry and 

 the like fall to the ground? 



Dr. Packard says that in July, 1901, for the first time in his 

 life, having for over forty years observed and collected insects, he 

 actually saw a bird chase a butterfly. Dr. J. B. Smith, the well- 

 known entomologist of Xew Jersey, affirms that only once has he 

 seen a bird chase a butterfly. Dr. W. M. Wheeler, of the Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History in New York, has never seen 

 birds pursuing butterflies. Dr. Needham, of Illinois, a most ex- 

 pert observer, has never seen a bird chase and eat a butterfly, nor 

 have any of his students seen it. Dr. S. H. Scudder, author of 

 the greatest work on American butterflies, affirms that only once 

 in New England has he seen proof that birds catch butterflies. 



There is some evidence on the other side. Thus Prof. J. Ken- 

 nel, of Dorpat, watched a pair of warblers feed their five young 



