MII\[ICRY AND PROTECTIVE RESEMBLANCE. 7]! 



times this mimicry is so exquisite, that you would mistake the whole 

 insect for a portion of the branching spray of a tree." 



It is not a little curious that it was on the very eve of the publication of 

 the "Origin of species," at the meeting of the British Association for the 

 Advancement of Science in 1859, that the first attempt was made to collect 

 facts of this nature, and to incpiire into the laws which regidate them. At 

 this meeting the late Mr. Andrew Murray read a paper upon the "dis- 

 guises of nature," in which he showed that the most perfect imitation of 

 inanimate objects occurs, not rarely or exceptionally, but in some groups 

 so commonly that the want of it might l)e regarded as the exception, and 

 that the concealment of the animal was the plain })urpose of the disguise. 

 He confesses, however, that he cannot tell what law has set in motion such 

 endless provision of protection, and can only suggest that it may be found 

 in some force analogous to the great law of attraction ; that "like draws to 

 like, or like begets like." 



The theory of natural selection, immediately afterward })rop<jsed by 

 Darwin, was the key to this puzzle. Its use for this purpose by Bates in 

 18G2 was one of the earliest independent contributions to the theory from 

 new observations. Buried in the depths of a special systematic paper, 

 Bates presented some of the most striking instances that are known of 

 such protective resemblance, in which the animals imitate not the objects 

 on or near which they live, nor such other creatures as are in themselves 

 frightful or predaceous, but butterflies quite like themselves, to all external 

 appearance as harmless and as much in need of protection as they. He 

 pointed out, moreover, that there is a special group of butterflies (Heli- 

 coninae) of vivid coloring, and slow and easy flight, which are the con- 

 stant subjects of mimicry, while the greater portion of the mimicking 

 butterflies he observed belonged to a very different group (Pierinae), nor- 

 mally wdiite and tolerably uniform in color, but which had so changed their 

 livery and even the form of their wings as to closely resemble the objects 

 they mimicked in brilliancy of color and variegation, and even in mode of 

 flight. Some, says he, "show^ a minute and palpably intentional likeness 

 which is perfectly staggering." Indeed, the resemblance proved so close 

 that even after he became aware of the mimicry, his practised eye was 

 often deceived. Or if he wandered to a new locality where occurred a 

 new set of Ithomyiae (the most numerously represented among the mim- 

 icked genera), the Leptalides (the mimickers) would vary with them so 

 as to preserve the mockery band for band and spot for spot.* Xow his 



* Mimicry has been the cause of some curi- figured the larva of Mcchanitis polvmiiia (Pi- 

 ous mistakes in entomology. Thus StoU' 1, tig. 4) under the name of euterpe, an earlier 

 figured a cuploeid caterpillar, Tithorea harmo- known butterfly belonging to the mimicking 

 nia (PI. 1, tig. 5) and gave it the name of am- genus Stalachtis, one of the Lemoniinae. and 

 phione, a butterfly ijelouging to the mimicking which Htibner from the same cause classed 

 ieptalid genus Dismorphia, and previously with the Ileliconians. Both errors were cor- 

 ligured by Cramer, Stoll' having doubtless rected by Bar (without mention of the cause) 

 mistaken it for the one he raised. So, too, he but not until they had made much confusion. 



