24 THE COMMONER BUTTERFLIES. 



most generally known is that of the oriental genus Kallima, 

 the species of which are highly colored on the upper sur- 

 face and conspicuous objects when in flight, but which are 

 so colored and marked upon the under side that when 

 alighted upon a twig, as they do with the fore wings thrown 

 well forward and all wings closed, the pattern and color 

 of the under surface are such as to make a perfect resem- 

 blance to a leaf whose midrib, a colored stripe crossing 

 both wings and terminating at the apex of the fore pair, 

 takes its rise from a tail-like extension of the hind wings 

 which just reaches the twig from which the mock leaf 

 thus springs, the tail of the wing corresponding to the 

 pedicel of the leaf ! 



These phenomena, however, reach their culmination in 

 the examples of mimicry of one butterfly by another, of 

 which there are numerous examples of an extraordinary 

 kind such as perhaps no other group of animals can pro- 

 duce. A large proportion of the objects of mimicry belong 

 to the subfamily Euploeinae, known to be a group protected 

 to a large extent against foes by the possession of nauseous 

 qualities, and it is therefore presumed that all other objects 

 of mimicry have from some cause or other some immunity 

 from early death above their fellows. Such a supposition 

 is the only one, and a sufficient one, to account for the 

 extraordinary resemblance of otherwise unj^rotected butter- 

 flies, especially in the female sex (for not always do the 

 males become mimickers), to such nauseous or protected 

 butterflies, a resemblance not only striking for its exceed- 

 ingly impressive quality, but for the departure required 

 from the normal type of coloring or j)attern of the grou]:*, 

 or even from that of the other sex alone; for its extension 

 to structural features, such as length of antennae and form 

 of wing, and to mode of flight ; and also for the fact that 

 the mimicker seems to fly only in the territory occupied by 

 the mimicked, while in neighboring territory occupied by 



