The Bionomics of South African Insects. 481 



model, while the Nymphaliue mimic shows such a marked 

 want of correspondence. The comparison may help 

 naturalists to realize the great importance of Milllerian 

 mimicry and the searching selective process which has 

 brought it about. 



I have for many years attributed this want of corre- 

 spondence between the commonest mimic of clirysi2opus 

 and its model, to the wide-ranging powers of the former 

 butterfly and its great tendency to wander, combined with 

 some special protection which there is reason to believe it 

 possesses, rendering its resemblance synaposematic rather 

 than pseudaposematic. There are in the Hope Depart- 

 ment three females (two of them inarm) and two males of 

 II. niisipjMs captured out of a swarm through which the 

 ship Wiiufred passed in May 1893, when she was on the 

 Atlantic over 500 miles from land (Ent. Record., vol. xii, 

 No. 11, p. 315). The Milllerian resemblance oi misipi^ns $ 

 to chrysippus was suggested by the present writer at the 

 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement 

 of Science in 1897 (see vol. xlvi, p. 242, where arguments 

 in support of this conclusion may be found). Extracts 

 on this subject from Mr. Marshall's letters are printed 

 below : — 



"Malvern, Natal; Oct. 7, 1897.— I fear I cannot at 

 present accept your suggestion that Hypolimnas misippus 

 is itself protected. I may be wrong, but in these mattei's 

 I depend more than anything on the habits and actions of 

 the insects as I have seen them when undisturbed and 

 when frightened. There is to my mind a radical difference 

 between mimics and their models (as opposed to convergent 

 forms) which is often very difficult to define. There is 

 also a structural difference which appeals to me, so that I 

 believe I could almost tell one from the other with my 

 eyes shut merely by the feel of it in the net. To give an 

 instance : when on a short holiday trip to the rich Mazoe 

 Valley in December 1894, I started out on Christmas Day 

 with the set purpose of catching something "good" to 

 commemorate the occasion. While strolling along the 

 narrow belt of thick bush which there fringes the river, I 

 saw flying leisurely in front of me what I took to be a 

 very small and brightly-coloured specimen of limnas 

 c]irysip)pus. I coveted it, and a few seconds later it was 

 in my net, through the folds of which I could but indis- 

 tinctly see it, so that I was still deceived. But no sooner 

 TRANS. ENT. SOC. LOND. 1902. — PART III. (NOV.) 32 



