(X n \_From the Teansactions op the Linneam Society, vol. xxvi.l 



On some remarkable Mimetic Analogies among African Butterjlies. 

 Bij EoLAND TiUMEN, Mem.. But. Soc. Loud. 



(Plates XLII. & XLIII.) 



Read March 5th, 1868. 



*****" C'est une cliose bicn rcmarquable que de voir la nature crecr a cote Ics uns ties autres 

 VEvplxea Niavim, le Diadevia dubia, et le PapiJio Westermanni, trois Le])idopteres qui se ressemblent 

 presque completeuieut par le port, Ic dessin, et la couleur, quoique apparteuant i\ des genres fort eloignes 

 et de tribus diiferentes." — Boisduval, Species General des Lepidopth-es , pp. 372, 373. 



r ROM the year 1836, when Dr. Boisduval published these remarks, a period of twenty- 

 five years elapsed without any lig-ht bein;^ thrown upon the meaning of those remarkable 

 resemblances among the Bhopalocera which are familiar to every lepidoptcrist, which 

 have been noted by entomologists in publications both prior and subsequent to the date 

 of the ' Species General,' and to one of the most striking of which the above quotation 

 refers. The extraordinary fact, that in all parts of the world species of Butterflies 

 occurred which, aberrant from the normal fades of their immediate allies, most closely 

 resembled other species of wholly different structure, awakened no comment beyond the 

 admission that it was curious, unless it were some vague suggestion as to " recurrent 

 types " in nature, which left the subject as completely mysterious as before. Entomo- 

 logists, no less than naturalists generally, appeared content with a child-like wonder at 

 this and kindred facts, and let them pass as things inscrutable. That this neglect of 

 inquiry was due in great measure to the absence of reliable observations upon the living 

 insects in their native haunts, cannot be doubted ; but it may be questioned if, with all 

 the data now accumulated by various explorers, those whose energies were necessarily, 

 and in many cases exclusively, concentrated upon the arduous work of the systematist 

 would have been enabled to elucidate the subject. It remained for one of those adven- 

 turous lovers of nature whose zeal for discovery leads them to years of tropical wander- 

 ings, to indicate, from his own assiduous observations, and in the light of that compre- 

 hensive theory of organic nature which we owe to Mr. Darwin, the rational explanation 

 of these phenomena. That this explanation is absolutely conclusive, or not susceptible 

 of future modification, it would be premature to assert ; but it is indisputably the only 

 advance yet made towards the solution of the difficulty, and so reasonable a demonstration 

 as to commend itself to every thoughtful observer. I need scarcely say that I refer to 

 the well-known treatise by Mr. Bates on the Ilellconidm of the Amazons Valley (published 

 in the twenty-third volume of the ' Transactions of the Linnean Society '), in which the 

 principle of natural selection is most ably applied in elucidation of the origin and 

 development of those " mimicries " of which many are now so astonishingly exact. The 



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