PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCE. 297 



eating birds we get from the North and the Continent, in the Autumn, 

 which stay with us till the Spring. The "integral part of the theories" 

 quoted above strikes me as an ingenious though abortive attempt, of 

 so ardent an advocate as Mr. Curtis, to get out of admitting that be 

 cannot make his theories fit nature. On page 165, after mentioning 

 Anthrucera fdipendidae, Arctia raja, etc., in connection with "Warning 

 Colours," he says, "one and all appear during the time insect life is 

 most abundant and when the birds would not be driven to unpalatable 

 food." Why should these insects be protected at the expense of the 

 " palatable " insects. The latter, however, survive notwithstanding. 

 How is it that so many cocoons of A. I'dipendtdae are found broken 

 open and the contents eaten if they are unpalatable. Again on the 

 same page Mr. Curtis makes it appear that it is onbj " in the Winter 

 vionths and Sprin;/, when our insectivoroun winter residents are hiisi/ and 

 hiOKjrij, that oar lepidopteroits insects seek the retiring ijarb of russet- 

 brown and dead leaf colours, or else dress theiiiselres in the soft t/reens and 

 yretjs of the licJien corered trees,'' whereas he must know that moths are 

 about all through the Summer with similar colours and form the class, 

 which must be the " palatable " insects, on which the Summer insect- 

 eating birds obtain their living. On page 155 Mr. Curtis says " In 

 some cases the writers seem to go to the absurd extremity of rejecting 

 everything in favour of the theories, whilst seizing upon and insisting 

 upon every little point, which they think tells against the theories." 

 Surely Mr. Curtis should not complain seeing that he does exactly the 

 same in favour of the theories. It is not enough to generalise " for or 

 against," but necessary also to particularise. With regard to experi- 

 ments on birds in confinement, and in spite of Mr. Curtis's charge of 

 "bitterly prejudiced obsession," I maintain that these tests are of 

 little value, as it is a well-known fact that well-fed birds in confine- 

 ment will refuse food that will be readily eaten by their own kind in a 

 wild state. A wild bird is trained from the nest to feed on various 

 insects. It is very illuminating how easily Mr. Curtis disposes of any- 

 thing which may tell against these experiments, as on p. 156 he says, 

 " I also believe that the fact that the bird and insect may not necessarily 

 be a bird and insect, which would normally meet in the wilds to be a 

 fact of very little iiioiiient.'' How very convenient ! I should have 

 thought that it would have made the experiment valueless because it 

 is quite understandable that a bird might be shy of a strange species. 

 Again, individual birds of the same species often have very different 

 tastes, one Kestrel will feed almost entirely on Agriades coridon, 

 another on small birds and mice, and oft another will attach itself to 

 a pheasant rearing field and take only young pheasants. On the 

 same page, in speaking of the known partiality of the Redbacked 

 Shrike for humble bees, to which I have also referred {anteuT^. 248) he 

 says, " / do not think that the fact that Lanins collurio {the Itedbacked 

 Shrike) has a known partialiti/ for bumble bees, sufficient to discount the 

 results attained by these hii/hli/ instructive experiments." Again, very 

 convenient ! It is at any rate absolute proof that the humble bee is 

 not a distasteful species to the Redbacked Shrike. One is an artificial 

 experiment, the other an observation from nature. 



With regard to experiments on birds in confinement, it may not be 

 out of place to refer to an article in the October number of Jlritish 

 Birds, by the editor, Mr. H. F. Witherby, on " The sequence of plum- 



