( 65 ) 
( III, On the Relation of Mimetic Patterns to the Original 
Form.* By Freperick A. Drxzy, M.A., M.D., 
F.E.S., Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. 
[Read Feb. 5th, 1896.] 
Bias: Dey. an Ve. 
I, Tae Grapuat Growrs or A Mimertic PaArrern. 
Iris now many years ago that Fritz Miller published 
an answer to those opponents of the theory of mimicry 
who made much of the difficulty of accounting for the 
first advances towards the formation of a mimetic 
pattern.t In the course of this communication he 
pointed out (as indeed Darwin had done before him) 
that mimicker and mimicked might, in many instances, 
be reasonably supposed to have started, not from a 
position of wide divergence from each other, but rather 
with the possession of some feature or features, common 
to them both, which should give material ready to hand 
for the assimilative process to work upon. The chief 
instance relied on by Fritz Miiller in support of his 
contention was the well-known mimetic genus of 
Pierine butterflies known as Leptalis or Dismorphia.t 
The black and yellow Leptalis (Dismorphia) melia, 
according to him, was to be regarded as representing 
the primitive type of coloration of the genus; and 
although it did not itself mimic any other form, it never- 
theless showed independently so much of the character- 
istic Heliconine colours and arrangement of pattern, 
that the complete Heliconine aspect presented by many 
of its near relatives could be derived from it with com- 
paratively shght modification. 
* A preliminary abstract of the present paper has appeared in 
the British Association Reports for 1894. 
+ ‘‘Einige Worte tiber Leptalis,” Jenaisch. Zeitschr., vol. x., 
1876, p. 1. 
t The old genus Dismorphia has been divided by Messrs. 
Godman & Salvin into Dismorphia, Pseudopieris, Enantia, and 
Acmepteron, Biol. Centr.-Amer., Rhopal. II., p. 174. Dr. Butler 
further distinguishes Moschoneura, Cist. Entom., Pt. iii. 
TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND. 1896.—ParT 1. (MARCH.) 5 
