Mimicry in Nature. 337 



distasteful kind, and, as a rule, are not eaten by birds or 

 reptiles. 



The butterflies of the genus Danais are a very good example 

 of distasteful creatures, and they are mostly in great numbers. 

 For my own part, I have never seen them attacked ; and I 

 remember some four years ago Mr. E. H. Aitken had some pet 

 lizards in Bombay, and he was very sceptical as to the Danais 

 being so distasteful as to be refused by creatm-es when hungry, 

 and he said he would make his lizards eat them. He therefore 

 kept them for five days without food, and then, in the ordinary 

 way of feeding them, he threw some live Danais into, their cage. 

 They greedily ran to them, and it was quite comical to see the 

 way they stopped as soon as they got to them, threw up their 

 heads and walked away as if disgusted, and would not touch 

 them ; and Meldola notes that in a neglected collection of 

 butterflies the mites will eat everything but the Danais, and 

 mites cannot be called dainty creatures. 



There are two kinds of so-called mimicry ; one where vast 

 quantities of distasteful butterflies of different genera and species 

 keep to the same colour and pattern, the other — the true 

 mimicry — where tasteful butterflies that would otherwise fall 

 an easy prey and become exterminated are protected by the 

 extraordinary resemblance to the distasteful ones. I think the 

 term "mimicry" has been rather abused. It is perhaps vm- 

 fortuuate that some better term has not been invented to expre-ss 

 the resemblance Nature has brought about in the course of ages, 

 by very slow degrees, of one creature for another for protection, 

 just in the same manner as Nature has brought about the 

 resemblance of creatures to their surroundings; because the 

 word mimicry in its ordinary sense means conscious imitation, 

 whereas the word as now used means nothing of the sort ; but it 

 is obviously absurd to apply the term mimicry to cases where 

 creatures that are all protected by being distasteful resemble one 

 another. 



We find that the protected species are always plentiful, mostly 

 in great numbers, and they live in countries in various groups of 

 patterns ; but when the systematist comes to examine any group 

 in large numbers, he finds, to his astonishment, that they are 

 not all alike — that there are in each group many species, and 

 even many subgenera. To call this mimicry is misleading ; if 

 the subject be thought out, the only conclusion we can come to 

 is that it could not be otherwise. Undoubtedly each group of 

 the same pattern came from one common ancestor, and it is 

 obvious that whatever changes have taken place in the course of 

 time, it was necessary for their better protection to maintain the 

 well-known distasteful pattern. At all events, there was no 

 necessity for changing it, and where changes have been gomg on 



