1904.] PACKARD— ORIGIN OP MARKINGS OF ORGANISMS. 395 



Thus a day- flying brightly-colored broad-winged moth such as the 

 East Indian Callamesia ?nidama *' mimics " the blue Euploea 

 butterfly, and the species of Chalcosia mimic, in the shape and 

 markingsof their wings, certain butterflies of the family Heliconidse. 

 It occurred to me that the brilliantly colored day moths, which are 

 evidently of earlier origin than butterflies, may have been preserved 

 from their resemblance to butterflies. But this is supposing that 

 butterflies serve as a staple food of insectivorous birds, which now 

 seems to be by no means the case, butterflies in reality appearing to 

 enjoy a peculiar immunity from the attacks of birds. 



Since looking more carefully into the subject and realizing the 

 slight basis of fact which underlies the original hypotheses of their 

 propounders, and that the importance of Bates-Miillerian mimicry 

 in species-making has been unduly magnified by more recent 

 writers, I have felt more strongly inclined tlian ever to discard these 

 hypotheses and to look for a broader and better founded theory or 

 explanation of the fact of the recurrence of similar colors, designs 

 or patterns in butterflies and in animals of other groups. 



It is now evident that protective mimicry in the case of butter- 

 flies, supposed to result from the attacks of birds, is not an isolated 

 series of facts, to be explained by the struggle for existence of 

 butterflies resulting from the attacks of birds, but that the same 

 phenomena occur in a number of other classes of animals. Thus ante- 

 lopes may be said to mimic zebras; the spotted leopard of the Old 

 World is marked like the jaguar and ocelot of the New World, their 

 habits and environment being the same ; shallow water fishes, both 

 those abounding in the shoal waters of coral reefs, as well as the 

 fresh water minnov\s, perch, darters, Lycodes, cottoids, etc., and the 

 poisonous Elaps, as well as the harmless species marked like them — 

 this similarity of markings and patterns in animals exposed to direct 

 sunlight, or living under the same conditions of life, is due not so 

 much to Bates-Mliller mimicry as to what we call convergence, or 

 the result of adaptation to similar physical environments or back- 

 grounds and to similar modes of life. 



It may be questioned whether the same physical agencies which 

 have painted sun-loving animals have not also ornamented the petals 

 or corollas of flowers with bars, stripes, lines and spots, the 

 patterns being subject to almost infinite variation. 



Thus the subject has entered on a new phase, and what has been 

 understood as protective mimicry, in the sense of Bates and of 



