262 Wonders of the Bird World 



a kind of protective colouration, seems to be a reliable fact, 

 even though one may not understand the circumstances 

 under which these changes have become necessary for the 

 preservation of the species. The examples of mimicry in 

 insects with which I was wont to illustrate my lectures were 

 supplied to me by my friend and colleague, Mr. Charles 

 Owen Waterhouse, of the British Museum, and they were 

 chosen as being perhaps more easy to understand than the 

 examples of bird-mimicry which followed. In the Amazons 

 there is a tiny n\o\h(Pompiliopsis tarsalis), which "mimics" 

 a little wasp of the same regions (Agenia), and here the 

 advantage of the protective resemblance is plain. Every 

 one knows what a Clothes'-moth is, an unfortunate little 

 creature which one abominates, and seizes with the fingers 

 or crushes with the hands. In the case of a wasp one 

 thinks twice before touching it, and Du Maurier long ago 

 hit off the situation in ' Punch,' when he pictured a little 

 maiden relating to her mother how a pretty wasp, with 

 yellow and black bands on its body, settled on her arm 

 and ran along. " But, oh, mamma dear, when it sat down! " 

 So perhaps a bird on the Amazons thinks twice before it 

 seizes the supposed wasp, which might sit down on its 

 tongue or in its eye. Thus does the little moth score by 

 being mistaken for the wasp. 



In Madagascar lives a butterfly, Papilio meriones, a fine 

 yellow species with black markings, with the sexes alike in 

 colour. On the continent of Africa a similar species is met 

 with, P. merope, and the male is again yellow and black as 

 in the Madagascar form, but the female is totally different, 

 and is a thorough " mimic " of a Danaid Butterfly belonging 

 to the genus A mauris, a member of a totally different family 

 of Butterflies, viz. the Danaidcs (see figs, on p. 261). Bearing 

 in mind the fact that " mimicry," wherever we find it, serves 

 as a protection to the more helpless animal, we see the 

 advantage gained by the female Papilio, which is quite 



