Birds in Relation to their Preij. 39 



experiment — A. areca, ? , a large species normally well 

 supplied with readily exuding poppy-flavoured fluid — were 

 uneaten, with the exception of an abdomen each of a 

 Belenois and the Teracolus. On my opening the tray a 

 Belenois severina, which had fallen behind it, was picked 

 up and swallowed. 



It is probably more than a coincidence (making all 

 allowance for the drying of the butterflies) that all the 

 Nymphaline butterflies of the experiment should have been 

 eaten or (in the case of the two remaining dry Precis cehrene) 

 heavily attacked — all of them, with the defences of procryptic 

 underside or great activity and wariness strongly developed; 

 while the white and bright yellow Pierines except Belenois, 

 a highly conspicuous black and white Popilio with crimson 

 underside wing-bases, and a sluggish day-flying moth \Aere 

 left — tried indeed (but the Pinacopteryx and Catopsilia showed 

 merely very slight wing-damage), but rejected. 



In general, the Noctuid moth Spldngomorpha had been 

 preferred to dull-coloured grasshoppers, these probably to 

 the larval migratory locusts, and these again to any butterflies 

 — though the drying of the latter (some of which were 

 attacked early) may have accounted sufficiently for their 

 low placing. 



502. Jan. 10 (later experiment). — In this I offered the 

 butterflies individually by the forceps, mostly through a 

 narrow crack in the woodwork of the cage. With the 

 exception of the butterflies specified and of the first Papilio 

 angolanus, left over rejected from the previous experiment, 

 but used again because still supple, all were probably caught, 

 and the birds' general attitude towards them contrasted with 

 the disinclination displayed for the more or less dry butterflies 

 of the previous experiment. 



A took the P. angolanus in the point of his bill and dropped 

 it, having obviously no use for it (it was wingless, too), but 

 he tasted well and readily ate two Precis artaxia (dull brown 

 and very leaf-like underside) and wrenched from the forceps 

 a thorax of Precis natalen sis (dry-season form), C taking the 

 abdomen. I offered a dry one. He ran it from side to side 



