MIMICRY. 325 



unknown plant in the absence of flowers or fruit. 

 Turn, for instance, again to the EiipJiorbiacece, and 

 compare one of the species of PhyllantJnis, with flat- 

 tened phyllodes, as PJiyllantJuis falcata} with a 

 similar structure in a species of the Buckwheat 

 family- iPoIygonacccv). Here, in an unusual form, a 

 striking mimetic resemblance will be encountered. 



Or, if we have only the young condition, without 

 flowers or fruit, of such a floating plant ^s Jussicsa 

 repcns, one of the Onagracea;, we shall at once be 

 struck with its resemblance to a similar condition 

 of an Euphorbiaceous plant {PJiyllantJms fliiitans), 

 and, at the same time, with such a cryptogam as 

 Salvinia rohindifolia. In our figures of these three 

 plants the resemblance is less striking than in the 

 plants themselves (fig. 6^). All of them float on 

 the water, under similar conditions, in different parts 

 •of the world. 



Dr. Berthold Seemann speaks of having seen, 

 in the Sandwich Islands, a variety of Solanum 

 {S. Nelsoni) which looked for all the world like a 

 well-known Buettneraceous plant of New Holland 

 {Tlwinasia solanacea), "the resemblance between the 

 two widely-separated plants being quite as striking 

 as that pointed out in Bates's " Naturalist on the 



^ " Botanical Register," pi. 373. 



•* Miihle7ibeckiaplatycladiuin, " Botanical i\Iagazine," pi. 5,382. 



