LECTURES. 35 
“ MIMICRY AMONG ANIMALS.” 
pon’t think I can introduce my subject to you 
better than by a quotation from the book in 
which Professor Drummond so graphically de- 
scribes his experiences in Tropical Africa. 
‘“* Mimicry,” he says, “is imposture in Nature. 
Thos. Carlyle in his blackest vision of shams and 
humbugs never saw anything so finished in 
hypocrisy, as may be found in every Tropical 
| Forest. There are to be seen creatures, not 
singly but in tens of thousands, whose appearance down to the 
minutest spot and wrinkle is an imposture, whose every attitude 
is a sustained lie. Before these masterpieces of deception the most 
ingenious of human impositions are vulgar and transparent. Fraud 
is not only the great rule of life in a tropical forest, but the one 
condition of it.” 
I think, when we know the facts, we shall be ready to endorse 
his opinion. Let me tell you what first called my attention to this sub- 
ject. When I wasat school up in Yorkshire, I was out with a friend one 
day, hunting for orchids in a bit of swampy undergrowth on the edge 
of a moor, when I was surprised to see a large hornet buzz past me 
and settle on a willow tree a little way off. We cautiously advanced 
to within reach, and made for him with a stick, in some trepidation 
lest we should miss him, and he should turn the tables on us, but we 
managed to wing him, and on examining our prey we found that 
his wings had the tiniest rim of down around them. He was no 
hornet at all, but a harmless clear wing moth, so closely resembling a 
hornet, as to deceive us even at a yard’s distance! We have heard 
of wolves in sheep’s clothing, but here was a sheep in wolf’s clothing ; 
or shall we say, the proverbial ass in the lion’s skin,—and like the 
ass, you will say, he met with the reward that he deserved ? 
But is this so? Let us try to answer two questions— 
(1). Why is the clear-wing arrayed like a hornet ? 
(2). How is he so arrayed ? 
The answer of the first question is the easier. The clear-wing is 
a soft dainty morsel, beloved of the warblers and linnets, and other 
