( xxxii ) 



Manders, it was not admitted that the theories of mimicry 

 had been weakened. That great literary genius and wonder- 

 ful observer Henri Fabre, who found the " Origin of Species " 

 too dull to read and yet was continually holding up to ridicule 

 what he supposed from his inner consciousness must be 

 Darwin's views, had attacked one interpretation of mimicry 

 in the Volucellas, but had not troubled to mention the other. 

 Col. Manders had summed up the possible causes of mimicry 

 as " natural selection, Mendelism, climate, environment and 

 the like." Mendelism was a relationship in heredity, and 

 manifestly did not account for the origin of the forms which 

 exhibited such relationship ; " climate, environment and the 

 like " produced effects which very few now believed to be 

 capable of hereditary transmission. Therefore, if, as Col. 

 Manders argued, natural selection also failed, the innumerable 

 examples of mimicry remained without an interpretation. 



A most important reply was made by Mr. C. F. M. 

 SwYNNERTON, which he has embodied in the following 

 paper : — 



A Brief Preliminary Statement of a few of the Results 

 OF Five Years' Special Testing of the Theories of 

 Mimicry. 



A. Introductory. 



At the instigation of Mr. G. A. K. Marshall, my immense 

 indebtedness to whom and to Prof. Poulton for endless help 

 and encouragement I have stated more fully in one of my 

 larger papers, I attempted, by a long and very careful series 

 of experiments and special observations that extended from 

 late 1908 to late 1913, to test the truth of the theories of 

 mimicry and of the various objections that have been brought 

 against them. I have since been continuously engaged in 

 preparing a detailed account of this work for publication. 

 Seeing, however, that the question of the validity of mimicry 

 is announced for full discussion at this meeting of the Society, 

 seeing too that much of the actual experimental evidence 

 is in any case now ready for publication, it seemed a pity 

 that some indication of its trend should not be available for 



