( xev ) 
of Skertchley (/. c., p. 485) who, among twenty-three species 
of Bornean butterflies taken with both hindwings mutilated 
in the same manner, notes no less than four Danaina, vid., 
Hestia lynceus, H. leuconoe, Ideopsis daos, and Huplwa midamus. 
Moreover, it is very remarkable that several of those entomo- 
logists who have specially emphasized the small part played 
by birds in attacking butterflies, mention, among the few 
eases of such attack as they witnessed, instances of protected 
forms being assailed, Sir G. Hampson * remarking that in 
South India the Euplcee and Danaids were caught as often 
as any others, and M. Pieperst that in two of the four cases 
which he had seen in Sumatra and Java, the species seized 
were Euplee. 
The question underlying this is manifestly whether insect- 
eating animals have an instinctive inherited discernment of 
what species are unfit for food, or whether, on the contrary, 
each individual has to acquire this necessary knowledge by 
personal experience, aided in some vertebrate groups by 
parental guidance. So numerous and so marvellous are the 
instinctive or congenital activities of animals—especially in 
the insect world, where past experience or parental instruction 
is almost always non-existent—that there has been a very 
general disposition on the part of naturalists to incline to the 
former view in a matter so all-important as suitable food. 
Yet, as far as experiment has hitherto gone in this direction, 
there seems good ground for holding that—at any rate in such 
specially insectivorous vertebrate groups as birds, lizards, and 
frogs—the young possess no such hereditary faculty of dis- 
crimination, but have to discover individually what to avoid. 
This appears not only from Mr. Jenner Weir’s and especially 
Prof. Poulton’s careful and often-repeated experiments with 
lizards and frogs, but also from Prof. Lloyd-Morgan’s study|| 
of newly-hatched birds of different orders, which indicates 
clearly with what complete want of discrimination every 
object of suitable size is at first pecked at and vas, |e how 
nero: Ent. Bee. Lond., 1897, p. xxxvil. 
+ Report of Intern. Zool. Congress, iii. (Leyden, 1895), p. 460. 
t See Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1887, pp. 191, ete. 
i “* Habit and Instinct,’”’ pp. 29-58. 
