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said proof. But this has hitherto never been attempted, nor does Prof. Seitz 

 attempts this as regards the cases cited by him ; because resemblance exists 

 protection, according to him, must be assumed. The facts observed by 

 Mr. ScHAUs, however, prove the invalidity of this assumption, and the statement 

 by Prof. Seitz in opposition to them is therefore, of no value. 



Mr. Roland Trimen expressed astonishment that it is possible to deny the 

 existence of mimicry in view of such instances as are provided by Papilio 

 Dardanus Brown. This naturalist appears to be unaware that these supposed 

 instances have been refuted by me long since. With regard to the statement 

 by Mr. Schaus, that only in exceptional cases has he observed birds attacking 

 butterflies, he does not consider it improbable that birds prey on butterflies 

 mostly in the early morning before the latter are on the wing and that for that 

 reason this is not frequently observed. He further makes a couple of obser- 

 vations in which simply on account of resemblance the existence of mimicry is 

 again a priori assumed. 



The Hon. W. RorHSCHiLo mentioned a couple of cases of resemblance 

 which in his opinion could only be explained by mimicry. 



Prof PouLTON was unable to agree with either M. Abbott H. Thayer or 

 Mr. Schaus in their interpretation of the subject of mimicry since a number 

 of authenticated observations had convinced him of the contrary. 



Dr. DixEv stated his opinion that observations such as those of Mr. Schaus 

 are not irreconcilable with the theory of Bates and Fruz Muller. 



Mr. Marshall finally quoted several instances in which birds had been 

 observed to prey on butterflies. He appears to forget, however, that if this 

 indeed possessed the significance attributed to it on behalf of the theory of 

 mimicry, it would not happen in a few instances only but would be of universal 

 occurrence and this, in view of all the statements that have been advanced against 

 this assertion, is evidently not the case. 



The latest on this subject which has come to my knowledge is a commu- 

 nication by A. M. Banta in an article entitled : " T/ic distaste fulness of Angsia 

 Plexippus" and published in N'atiire of May g'*^ 191 2. It is to the following 

 effect : " For a number of years trained experts of the United States Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture have been engaged in determining the food of native birds 

 by examination of the contents of thousands of bird's stomachs collected in all 

 sections of the country and in all seasons of the year. The bearing of these 

 findings upon the question of butterflies as food for birds has recently been 

 summed up by one of these experts as follows : " Four records of birds eating 

 butterflies are all that are afforded by the records of the examination of more 

 than 40000 stomachs in the Biological Survey". 



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