404 Natural History 



blance." If however the butterfly, being itself a savory mor- 

 sel to birds, had closely resembled another butterfly which 

 was disagreeable to birds, and therefore never eaten by them, 

 it would be as well protected as if it resembled a leaf; and 

 this is what has been happily termed " mimicry " by Mr. Bates, 

 who first discovered the object of these curious external imi- 

 tations of one insect by another belonging to a distinct genus 

 or family, and sometimes even to a distinct order. The clear- 

 winged moths which resemble wasps and hornets are the best 

 examples of " mimicry " in our own country. 



For a long time all the known cases of exact resemblance 

 of one creature to qviite a dififerent one were confined to in- 

 sects, and it was therefore with great pleasure that I discov- 

 ered in the island of Bouru two birds which I constantly mis- 

 took for each other, and which yet belonged to tAvo distinct 

 and somewhat distant families. One of these is a honey- 

 sucker named Tropidorhynchus bouruensis, and the other a 

 kind of oriole, which has been called Mimeta bouruensis. 

 The oriole resembles the honeysucker in the following par- 

 ticulars : the upper and under surfaces of the two birds are 

 exactly of the same tints of dark and light brown ; the Tro- 

 pidorhynchus has a large bare black patch round the eyes ; 

 this is copied in the Mimeta by a patch of black feathers. 

 The top of the head of the Tropidorhynchus has a scaly 

 appearance from the narrow scale-formed feathers, which 

 are imitated by the broader feathers of the Mimeta having 

 a dusky line down each. The Tropidorhynchus has a pale 

 ruff formed of ciirious recurved feathers on the nape (which 

 has given the whole genus the name of friar-birds) ; this is 

 represented in the Mimeta by a pale band in the same posi- 

 tion. Lastly, the bill of the Tropidorhynchus is raised into 

 a protuberant keel at the base, and the Mimeta has the same 

 character, although it is not a common one in the genus. 

 The result is, that on a superficial examination the birds are 

 identical, although they have important structural difier- 

 ences, and can not be placed near each other in any natural 

 arrangement. 



In the adjacent island of Ceram we find very distinct spe- 

 cies of both these genera, and, strange to say, these resemble 

 each other quite as closely as do those of Bouru. The Tropi- 



