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eleven years or vice versa. In Central Africa Mr. Neave gives 

 a single instance in which a bird selected certain Lycaenidae 

 in preference to Acraeines. There may be a few others, but 

 if so I am unaware of them. I believe I am substantially 

 correct in stating that the direct evidence for distastefulness 

 on this continent depends upon Mr. Neave's water-wagtail. 

 Dr. Carpenter inadvertently gives the explanation why the 

 wagtail avoided the Acraeines in his remark that these birds 

 only eat small insects. Of instances of tasting experiments 

 there are none. All this bears out the remark made by Mr. 

 Frederick Selous, that during the twenty years he was in 

 Africa he never saw a bird eat a butterfly. 



On the other hand in India, with the exception of one 

 observation by Col. Bingham, there is much evidence to show 

 that far from being inedible the so-called nauseous butterflies 

 are more largely eaten than others, and any butterfly mimicking 

 them is courting disaster by so doing. 



Mr. Andrewes in the Nilgiris and myself on their eastern 

 slopes noticed the ground strewn with the wings of Danaines 

 and Euploeas in the close vicinity of drongos and flycatchers. 

 In Ceylon Col. Yerbury has seen Euploeas being eaten by the 

 ashy wood-swallow. Mr. Fryer has recorded a flock of the same 

 bird feeding on them for days. Mr. Poole also records a fly- 

 catcher eating large numbers of a so-called inedible Pierine. 



Further, Mr. Andrewes has watched bulbuls feeding their 

 young on Acraeines, and I have recorded the same with a fly- 

 catcher and Euploea. Further evidence could easily be quoted. 



No observations or evidence of any kind, as far as I know, 

 have ever been furnished regarding the tasting experiments 

 of young birds in a wild state except my own, in which I clearly 

 showed that in one species nothing of the kind takes place. 

 I do not go so far as to say that the instances I have given are 

 sufficient in themselves to disprove the mimetic theory, but, 

 coupled with the failure of Dr. Carpenter's crucial test, we 

 shall not go far astray if we conclude, before bringing forward 

 other crucial tests, to first ponder the words of J. Henri Fabre, 

 Darwin's " incomparable observer " : — 



" The Mimicry of the Bumble-bee fly [resemblance of 

 Volucella to Vespa], which was said to be one of the most con- 



