126 THE entomologist's recoed. 



Lieut.-Col. Manders does a very great deal less than justice to the 

 evidence produced by Mr. G. A. K. Marshall, because first he says "all 

 available evidence." It was all the evidence that Mr. Marshall's great 

 industry collected in a very short time, and it was a pretty strong 

 collection, but there were omissions to my knowledge. Secondly, he 

 entirely ignores the Garden Warblers [Sylvia shiijdcx, Becht.) that 

 actually fed their young on Pieiis rapae. Further, why he should 

 assume " that if any bird fed, etc., such would be known," I do not 

 quite know, and he might refer to Mr. Marshall's remark on the 

 Kestrel, which was originally a casual observation of mine, and once 

 pointed out, has been noticed by other people at various different 

 localities, and has been repeatedly confirmed by myself all along the 

 Dorset coast. Yet no one had remarked it before, and it must have 

 been going on for untold centuries. I refer Lieut.-Col. Manders, also 

 to Folsom, Ent.nmolo;i!j, with reference to its Biononiic and Economic 

 Aspects, page 284, et see], (pub. 1906). 



[ do not think myself that it matters whether we ascertain how 

 much protection be afforded by cryptic coloration. No one believes 

 (or ought to believe) that either styles of coloration secure absolute 

 immunity, a comparatively qualified protection will call into play just 

 those forces which the believers in the theories consider to have been 

 called into play. I cannot follow Lieut.-Col. Manders into the jungle, 

 nor can I pit twenty years of mature experience against his twenty 

 years, since my naturalistic leanings only became noticeable a little 

 longer ago than that, but though it may seem a matter of chance which 

 animal comes to grief, the "seeming" is probably quite superficial. 

 It may well be that the two tigers, acting in concert, would not get as 

 good a chance of even coming across the bull-bison with the keener 

 hearing and the keener scent. It may seem a lottery, but even 

 lotteries conform to the law of averages. I cannot admit the cogency 

 of the argument that the capture of an odd specimen here and there, 

 etc., can have little or no effect. How many people observe these 

 attacks, how many record them ? Few of the former, still fewer of the 

 latter, yet one may be quite sure that, what the bird is bold enough to 

 do before one's face occasionally, it is likely to do much more often 

 behind one's back, and one may also be sure that the entire bird 

 population over the entire area of their residence are doing exactly the 

 same thing all the time, and the cumulative effect must be very great. 

 Eemember we do not see a very small decimal per cent, of the actual 

 slaughter, and, with the best will in the world, we can only observe a 

 very small decimal per cent, of the birds, over a still smaller fraction 

 of their area of residence. 



I agree that to find birds which systematically prey or prove 

 systematic preying upon Lepidoptera by an overwhelming weight of 

 evidence, would be evidence that would close the mouth of the caviller 

 once and for all, but I likewise agree that to find such a bird or birds 

 is a difficult and laborious task, and after twenty years of birds and 

 their funny little ways and curious individual likes and dislikes, I 

 should say a well-nigh impossible task. The best way to solve the 

 difficulty is to procure the stomachs of insectivorous birds, mount the 

 contents, however fragmentary, and elucidate them as best one can. 

 Mr. Marshall has pointed out the difficulty of identifying parts of 

 lepidopterous insects (1908, Tran^. Knt. Soc. Lond., page 138), but the 



