296 Mr. (J. A. K. Marshall on 



terms " wet phase " and " dry phase " * are generally used 

 in preference to " form " or " variety/' while Mr. Marshall's 

 useful sign to indicate the former and to indicate the 

 latter are freely em])loycd. The remainder of the paper is 

 chiefly devoted to the description of an immense mass of 

 material illustrating mimicry and common warning colours 

 in E-hopalocera, Coleoptera, Hymenoptera, and to a less 

 extent Hemiptera. Many interesting conclusions emerge 

 and are discussed. 



I entirely agree with Mr. Marshall's opinion that an 

 unbiassed consideration of the facts presented in this paper 

 yields a very strong measure of siipport to the classical 

 theories of Bates, Wallace and Fiitz Midler. I w^ould go 

 further and maintain that Mr. Marshall's observations and 

 experiments here recorded, place Africa in the first position 

 as the region which supplies stronger evidence than any 

 other of the validity of these theories. But I am even 

 more impressed by the strong support yielded to the 

 modern developments of Fritz Midler's theory of mimicr}^ 

 Where has Professor Meldola's MUllerian explanation in 

 1882 of tlie conmion facies of specially-protected sub- 

 fandlies of butterflies received such ilhistration as in the 

 groups of synaposematic Aciwin/v captured in one place 

 and at one time ; or the extension in 1887 by the 

 present writer of the same interpretation to the types of 

 insect colour and pattern which are common to a country, 

 received such support as in the marvellous group of 

 Mashonaland insects of many Orders with an appearance 

 founded upon that of the distasteful Coleopterous genus, 

 Lycus ? And the most recent developments of ail, the 

 discovery (1894-7) of the principle of "reciprocal mimicry" 

 or " diaposematic resemblance," and of the specially close 

 mimetic resemblance of the females in Milllerian mimicry 

 no less than in Batesian by Dr. Dixey, together with his 

 IVIidlerian interpretation of resemblances between mimics 

 overlying their resemblance to a common model, all these, 

 founded on the stud^' of Neotropical forms, have supplied 

 the explanation of numerous instances in the Ethopian 

 Region although applied to very different families and 



* Tlie term "phase" is advantageous inasmuch as it is conveniently 

 applicable to the whole of the winter or summer generations of a 

 species, as well as to single individuals of either seasonal form. 



