40 CHELTENHAM COLLEGE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
‘Chirombo ’—a live creature, and pointed to a wisp of hay that had 
fallen on his coat. The Professor turned it over and asked where the 
‘Chirombo’ was. “ There in your hand” said the native. The wisp 
of hay was itself the Chirombo. Like all its kind, it had the 
power of shamming dead and lay a veritable bit of brown grass, 
which could be pinched or pulled about without shewing a sign 
of life. Another curious insect of the same type is the ‘ walking- 
stick ’ insect of which I am fortunate enough to have a specimen here 
to-night. 
But even this was not the arch-deceiver. The Professor was 
lying one day among the bare rocks by a river-bed watching the life 
around him. There were a lot of white bird droppings about on the 
stones. He happened to have his eyes fixed on one, when suddenly 
it moved. There was no doubt about it. He walked up to it, but 
no ! his eyes had deceived him. There it was, a mere bird dropping. 
However, he thought he would make sure, and turned it over, and 
there he found a head and six legs ! 
Perhaps the most beautiful cases of mimicry are those in which 
the imitator resembles an inedible species. In tropical forests of 
South America there is a large family of butterflies called the 
ffeliconide. ‘They are evidently unpleasant to the palate and exude 
an unpleasant juice ; (neither the fowls nor a pet monkey would look 
at them), and so they are guadily decked with warning colours, to tell 
birds that they are not meant to be eaten. Another family, the 
Pieride, are unconspicuous, and move with a rapid flight, knowing 
that they are tempting morsels. But several species of the Pveride 
mimic exactly corresponding individuals among the Fe/tconide. 
They differ utterly in shape, and are as different, from the 
_ naturalist’s point of view, as a dog from a rabbit; eg., six legs to 
‘four, but when flying it is almost impossible to distinguish them 
apart. (They both have the same lazy nonchalant method of going 
about, and of hanging in the most conspicuous places). And this 
is not an isolated instance. Similar cases may be counted by the 
hundred. 
The Danaide are a very numerous group of brightly painted 
butterflies, which more or less take the places of the He/tconid@ in the 
Old World. One of them, D. Chrysippus, is of a tawny red with 
"black borders dotted with white. There are also four black spots 
“in the middle of the hind wings. Like the He/iconide they are very 
_ tough and exude a powerfully smelling juice, and are not attacked by 
birds, and, extraordinary to relate, their colours and markings are 
4 
