156 THE entomologist's kecord, 



like tastes. I also believe that the fact that the bird and the insect 

 may not necessarily be a bird and insect which would normally meet 

 in the wilds to be a fact of very little moment. R. J. Pocock's con- 

 clusions, loc. cit., p. 810, which amply bear me out, are of particular 

 interest in this respect, and I do not think that the fact that Lanins 

 collnrio has a known partiality for bumble-bees, sufficient to discount 

 the results attained by these hio;hly instructive experiments. Lest it 

 be said that Lanins collnrio, the Redbacked Shrike, has not this marked 

 partiality, I might mention that my brother and I found a pair of L. 

 collnrio a little while back that had collected between 80 and 40 

 bumble-bees and stuck them on a thorn hedge, very neatly pinned 

 against being wanted for the next meal. 



To my mind Mr. Colthrup and Lieut.-Col. Manders, in viewing the 

 question of protective coloration from the narrow standpoint of attacks 

 on lepidopterous imagines only, give opponents of the theories a handle 

 to which they are in no wise entitled. True it may be that a proved 

 systematic and constant preying of birds upon lepidopterous imagines 

 would place the theories on an immovable basis, but without admitting 

 that no such preying has been proved since the evidence cited and 

 referred to above goes a long way to this end, I maintain that the 

 coloration theories are entitled to all the support they can draw from 

 any source from which they can get it. Were cryptic coloration a 

 phenomenon only observed in the Lepidoptera in the imago stage, I 

 should be with these two writers (see Mr. Colthrup and Lieut.-CoL 

 Manders) in regarding the absence of attacks on the cited Folia chi as 

 a fact throwing doubt on the whole theory, but on every hand one 

 finds that this form of concealment is resorted to, and, as shown by 

 Mr. Marshall's observations in South Africa, is often only resorted to 

 by some species at the time when the stress of life is more severe, viz., 

 the dry season. 



" The theories must be taken as a whole and contested as a whole." 

 The Rev. G. Wheeler {in litt., October 31st. 1912),^^= took me to task 

 over that statement because, in his view, I had exhibited the weakness 

 of a specialist (which by the way I cannot pretend to be). Or as 

 another friend of mine remarked when I pointed out to him the 

 extraordinary likeness of Danaida (Salatitra) t/enutia and Pentliema 

 dichroa, " Oh, you see mimicry in everything." Mr. Wheeler went on 

 to refer me to remarks of his in the (1910) Kntowohujist, p. 214, where 

 he girded at the systematist who pinned his faith to a single character. 

 Now, his views there expressed are, if I may say so with deference, 

 unsound, but his objection to my statement is, I submit, equally 

 unsound. I cannot admit that the soundness of a theory ought to be 

 tested by the measure in which it may be applied to elucidate a set of 

 facts to which it has no true relation. A being with no knowledge of 

 the density of air, but a knowledge of the effect of gravity, would 



* I have no desire to "burke" the publication of any part of this paper, much 

 of which is very valuable and all very ingenious, and it is reproduced as received ; 

 but I must protest that it is not " playing the game" to answer in a magazine 

 article a letter that has never been published and was never intended for publi- 

 cation, and which was admittedly both incomplete and hurried. What I wrote in 

 the Kutomolopist I entirely adhere to, but 1 sincerely hope that no one will take 

 my opinions on this subject at second-hand from the present paper, where they 

 are m some cases caricatured and in others totally misconceived. — George 

 Wheeler. 



