IX 
WARNING COLORATION AND MIMICRY 
235 
their young; and although the Heliconidse swarmed in the 
vicinity, and from their slow Right could have been easily 
caught, not one was ever pursued, although other butterflies 
did not escape. His tame monkey also, which would greedily 
munch up other butterflies, would never eat the Heliconidse. 
It would sometimes smell them, but always rolled them up in 
its hand and then dropped them. 
We have also some corresponding evidence as to the 
distastefulness of the Eastern Danaidse. The Hon. Mr. 
Justice Newton, who assiduously collected and took notes 
upon the Lepidoptera of Bombay, informed Mr. Butler of the 
British Museum that the large and swift-flying butterfly 
Charaxes psaphon, was continually persecuted by the bulbul, 
so that he rarely caught a specimen of this species which had 
not a piece snipped out of the hind wings. He offered one to 
a bulbul which he had in a cage, and it was greedily devoured, 
whilst it was only by repeated persecution that he succeeded 
in inducing the bird to touch a Danais. 1 
Besides these three families of butterflies, there are certain 
groups of the great genus Papilio — the true swallow-tailed 
butterflies — which have all the characteristics of uneatable 
insects. They have a special coloration, usually red and 
black (at least in the females), they fly slowly, they are very 
abundant, and they possess a peculiar odour somewhat like 
that of the Heliconidae. One of these groups is common in 
tropical America, another in tropical Asia, and it is curious 
that, although not very closely allied, they have each the same 
red and black colours, and are very distinct from all the other 
butterflies of their respective countries. There is reason to 
believe also that many of the brilliantly coloured and weak- 
flying diurnal moths, like the fine tropical Agaristidse and 
burnet-moths, are similarly protected, and that their con¬ 
spicuous colours serve as a warning of inedibility. The 
common burnet-moth (Anthrocera filipendula) and the equally 
conspicuous ragwort-moth (Euchelia jacobeae) have been proved 
to be distasteful to insect-eating creatures. 
1 Nature, vol. iii. p. 165. Professor Meldola observed that specimens of 
Danais and Euplaea in collections were less subject to the attacks of mites 
(/' roc. Ent. Soc . , 1877, p. xii. ) ; and this was corroborated by Mr. Jenner Weir. 
Entomologist, 1882, vol. xv. p. 160. 
