( xciv ) 



" Again — one striking feature — I never saw a Drongo on 

 the islands. I should think they must live on the mainland 

 round Entebbe, but have not seen one, though I have not 

 done any work on the mainland. [Mr. Neave does not 

 remember whether he saw Drongos at Entebbe, but thinks 

 the locality unlikely for the common species.] 



" As regards the passage to and fro of birds from mainland 

 to islands, Col. Manders appears to think that such a passage 

 must be an objection to my explanation. But why should 

 it be ? A bird passing across 25 miles or so of water carries 

 with it the memories of its last hunting-ground, surely? 

 I know that Bee-eaters fly over wide stretches of water, as 

 I have seen them when canoeing. 



" Now Col. Manders thinks my table in the Sleeping 

 Sickness Reports shows that birds do not eat butterflies. 

 Surely this is hardly justifiable. Firstly, I was not searching 

 for evidence as to what birds eat, but only as to whether 

 they ate Glossina ; i. e. I was looking for one specific object — 

 the tsetse fly's wings : so any piece of a butterfly that was 

 not crossly obvious would have been likely to be passed 

 over; for I used only a low-power dissecting microscope and 

 not one high enough to distinguish Lepidopterous scales, 

 which, as Swynnerton has shown so admirably, is absolutely 

 necessary. One could deduce equally well from my table 

 that birds do not eat Diptera ! 



"Col. Manders makes some large assumptions. On the 

 evidence of 116 birds he says 'we may assume that none 

 [i. e. no tasting experiments] took place.' 



" He talks about ' aposematic crimson and blue bodies of 

 Dragonflies.' On what evidence does he call them 'apose- 

 matic ' ? Surely a sine qua non of an aposematic insect is 

 a method of display by slow gait, feeble flight, sluggishness, 

 etc. Are any of these characteristics of Dragonflies ? There 

 is, one would think, much more ground for ascribing these 

 colours to sexual selection (if this hypothesis holds good at 

 all), seeing that the males are often so much more gaudy 

 than the females. 



"Lastly, a propos of his quotation from Fabre, was not 

 thai greal observer's objection to the mimetic explanation of 



