xlv, xlvi] Celle 4) 
suggestion is carrying the climatic theory to a somewhat un- 
warrantable length. We are next reminded of Eisig’s sug- 
gestion that “those bright colours of animals which have 
hitherto been regarded as of warning significance, are merely 
the substance or secretions which confer the unpleasant taste, 
and that therefore Wallace’s older interpretation is unneces- 
sary and, in fact, erroneous.” Now we have already been 
told that the existence of very inconspicuous animals of a 
highly distasteful nature is an argument against the theory of 
warning colours, and yet in the next breath a theory is quoted 
which to be adequately supported would require that these 
highly distasteful insects should also be highly coloured. 
At the end of the next section the author discusses the case 
of the brightly coloured Nicaraguan frog which I mentioned in 
the earlier portion of my remarks, Whilst allowing that the 
frog is inedible and that its gay colours have taught the birds 
to avoid it, it is maintained that the cause of the bright colours 
has been exposure to the bright sunlight and consequent 
excessive pigmentation. On this supposition the bright colours 
would have been developed just the same had the creature been 
of an edible species, except that such colours would have soon 
resulted in the animal’s entire extinction. It is therefore 
merely accident that the bright colours and inedible qualities 
co-exist. I am prepared to submit that in one or two isolated 
cases such an accident might be possible ; for the sake of argu- 
ment I would even go so far as to allow that in the case of 
the frog, the co-existence of bright colours and inedibility is 
accidental, or the result of climatic conditions, or even that the 
inedible qualities are the sowsces of the bright colouring. Then 
for the sake of further argument let us suppose that all such 
cases have arisen from one of these causes, and we are faced 
with the difficulty that Papilio merope, for instance, can produce 
from one batch of eggs the typical male, and the trophonius, 
cenea, and the black and white forms of female, all entirely 
different in appearance, the females not resembling the males 
in the least, and each closely resembling a common inedible 
Danaid, all of which surprising and varied results are achieved 
by either accident, similar climatic conditions, or distasteful 
pigments of the existence of which there is no evidence. I 
