Some Recent Observations upon Mimicry. 



SUPERFICIAL resemblances between animals, often remote from 

 each other in the system of nature, have long been familiar to 

 naturalists. Messrs. Kirby & Spence refer in their " Introduction to 

 Entomology " to the case of the fly Volucella, which, as these authors 

 justly remark, strikingly resembles the bee in whose nest its young 

 are parasitic. Long before Kirby & Spence, Belon had classified 

 whales with fishes, and similar likenesses, which imply no real 

 affinity, even now mislead systematic zoologists every day. An 

 excellent series of cases has been lately added to the Natural History 

 Museum at South Kensington, illustrating a few of the more 

 remarkable instances of particular resemblances among insects not 

 nearly related to each other. It is to these close and often wonder- 

 fully detailed likenesses that the term " Mimicry " is usually 

 restricted. 



Before giving some account of recent facts and suggestions con- 

 cerning this subject, it may perhaps be useful to remind the reader of 

 the current theory of mimicry. Many creatures which belong to 

 groups commonly preyed upon by larger and stronger animals, are 

 possessed of some weapon of defence or some disagreeable attribute, 

 which is duly advertised by a conspicuous appearance. The hornet, 

 for example, though a giant among its own tribe, is a puny creature 

 when compared with even a small bird. But the hornet is amply 

 recompensed for its disadvantages in point of size and strength by 

 possessing a formidable sting. This gives the insect a usefully evil 

 reputation, and enables it to defy most of its natural enemies. 



In this country there is a rather rare moth, which is called the 

 " Hornet Clearwing," on account of the singular likeness which it 

 bears to a hornet. Moths, like butterflies, have four wings densely 

 clothed with scales; exceptionally — as with the " Clearwings " 

 (named so for this very reason) — the wings are largely denuded of 

 these scales ; thus there is evidently at once a certain likeness to a 

 bee or a hornet, or to any insect without scaly wings, and a corres- 

 ponding diff'erence from the scale-winged Lepidoptera. But the 

 resemblance goes further than this; the moth has a body banded with 

 brown and yellow, precisely like the hornet, and is of about the same 

 size. Moreover, it has been said that this moth, when handled, moves 

 its abdomen "in a very suggestive fashion," as if hinting at a sting 



