THE COLORATION PROBLEM. A REJOINDEU. 189 



appear in our Magazine, I informed the author of this fact, 

 and asked him whether he would prefer to read these papers 

 before publishing his own, as they might modify his views and cause 

 him to re-consider some parts of his paper. At the same time I took 

 occasion to point out certain fallacies, as they appeared to me, in the 

 arguments by which some of his views were supported. The paper a3 

 a whole seemed to me so valuable and important, that I wished the 

 writer to have every opportunity of making it as perfect as possible, 

 and as he had not been present at certain meetings of the Entomo- 

 logical Society he had no possible means of knowing that these papers 

 were about to appear. I am carrying out his wishes in stating that as 

 a matter of fact he did modit}' his article in certain directions, in 

 consequence both of the publications of the Entomological Society to 

 which I had referred him, and of the observations I made in my first 

 letter in September, and more fully in that of October 31st, which is 

 now more particularly in question. Of course if he had simply referred 

 to the correspondence from this point of view I could have had no 

 objection, but he appears to me to have singled out only those points 

 in it W' hich he wished to dispute. This however is a matter which any 

 reader can decide for himself. 



I have Mr. Curtis's own authority for stating that what he wrote 

 was that he regarded my views expressed in the Entonioloiiiu as being 

 " sound " (not " unsound," as erroneously printed), and the point of 

 my argument there is just that of his next paragraph, namely, that 

 the soundness of a theory ought not to be tested by its mapplicability 

 to certain cases. I do not see how anyone could read Mr. Curtis's last 

 paragraph on p. 156 and not feel confident that I had expressed 

 adherence to an entirely opposite theory. Again, the whole reference 

 to my opinions certainly appears to me to place me among 

 the opponents of the theory of Mimicry, while in point of fact I merely 

 think it a pity that a theory which is of great value, and the best 

 working hypothesis yet propounded, should so often be made to 

 appear ridiculous by being stretched to cover cases to which it is quite 

 inapplicable. Again the author of the paper writes: — "Mr. Wheeler 

 suggests that the theories might be applied where almost demonstrably 

 applicable, but rejected in other cases." What I wrote was : — " It is 

 at least possible that protective resemblance may be extremely useful 

 and mimicry an actual fact in some cases, or at some stages, but not 

 in others. It is surely quite logical to accept it in some instances in 

 which it is almost demonstrably true, and to reject it in others in 

 wJtich it is almost demonstrabhj false.'' Here, I submit, my views have 

 been 'caricatured.' It would doubtless have been better if for 'true' 

 and 'false' I had written 'applicable' and 'inapplicable,' but that my 

 meaning was grasped by the author is evident from his use of the word 

 'applicable' above. Again:— "I cannot follow Mr. Wheeler in his 

 suggestion that the theories may apply to one Order and need not 

 necessarily apply to another." I Avrote : — " It might easily be true 

 {tJiouijh I dont think it is so) that Mimicry was a perfectly good and 

 sound theory applied to some parts of the animal kingdom but not to 

 others — not to the Lepidoptera for example — but I believe it would be 

 much truer to say that it often applies to many Orders, including the 

 Lepidoptera, especially in the larval stage, but that it is stretched by 

 its advocates to cover countless cases with which it has nothing to do." 



