C sca) 
*¢ time,”’ with the result that a more or less intimate mimetic 
relation was brought about with several protected forms of 
quite different affinities, though each connected in their 
colouring and aspect with some group of distasteful asso- 
ciates, He further set forth very fully the distinction which 
exists between the mimicry of inedible by edible forms, which 
could only be in one direction and was of advantage to the 
mimicker alone, and the assimilation among inedible forms 
themselves, where the mimetic attraction acts reciprocally, to 
the advantage of all participators. 
Another of our Fellows, Colonel C. Swinhoe, distinguished 
for his wide and intimate knowledge of Oriental Lepidoptera, 
read before the Linnean Society, in 1895, a most interesting 
paper ‘‘ On Mimicry in Butterflies of the genus Hypolimnas,”’ * 
In this memoir, as the author points out, a small group of 
wide-ranging mimetic insects is followed throughout its geo- 
graphical distribution ; and the process of mimetic modifica- 
tion is traced through the female, from the amazing instability 
of that sex of H. bolina (local form) in the Fiji Islands, 
where the male is stable and of the normal ancestral pattern 
and colouring, to the opposite extreme in Africa, where (with 
the exception of H. misippus) both sexes of the known allied 
forms of the genus are equally mimetic.+ The singular con- 
trast between the numerous modifications of the female of 
the Bolina type, and the absolutely constant imitation of 
Danais chrysippus alone by the Q H. misippus is well brought 
out, and the different courses thus pursued by the respective 
females are shown to depend on the range, variation, and 
abundance of the model that is mimicked. Colonel Swinhoe 
had previously (1887) published a good account of mimicry 
in Indian butterflies,t and in it made special reference to the 
remarkable series of close hkenesses between species belong- 
ing to different subgenera of the great protected genus 
Huplea. 
* Linn. Soc. Journ. Zool., xxv., pp. 339-348. 
+ It should be noted that in the African H. salmacis and the Malagasy 
H. devithea the sexes are alike and non-mimetic, and that therefore these 
species probably most closely approximate to the primitive appearance of the 
genus. 
t Journ. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc., 1., pp. 169-174. 
