IN DEFENSIVE COLORATION 327 



A*. Synaposematic or Common Warning Colours 



(MtJLLERiAN Mimicry). 



This subject, though logically but a section of Apo- 

 sematic Colours, is of such vast importance that it is 

 here converted into a separate heading equivalent to 

 A. Aposematic, and marked with an A*. 



Animals with Warning Colours often tend to resemble 

 each other superficially, as was pointed out by H. W. 

 Bates in his paper on the Theory of Mimicry.^ He 

 showed that the conspicuous, presumably unpalatable, 

 tropical American butterflies, belonging to very different 

 groups, which are mimicked by other species, also tend 

 to resemble each other, the likeness being often remark- 

 ably exact. The resemblances were not explained by 

 Bates's Theory of Mimicry, and he could only suppose 

 that they had been produced by the influence of a 

 common environment, a suggestion at first adopted by 

 Wallace but abandoned by him as soon as Fritz MuUer's 

 hypothesis appeared in 1879.^ 



It seems probable that Bates was misled by a failure to 

 realize the remoteness of the affinity borne by the Heli- 

 cojiinae to the Ithomiinae, and that consequently the mimi- 

 cry between them did not appeal strongly to him. He 

 indeed saw and described the important structural differ- 

 ences, but still left them united as Heliconidae, calling 

 the Heliconinae, Acraeoid, and the Ithomiinae (including 

 the Danaine genera Lycorea and Itunci) Danaoid. The 

 superficial resemblances were so close in shape as well as 

 pattern of wing that he was driven to accept an arrange- 

 ment which gave too little weight to characters of greater 

 importance. 



As a solution of the difficulty Fritz Muller suggested 

 that life is saved by a resemblance between the W'arning 

 Colours in any area, inasmuch as the education of young 



^ Trans. Limt. Soc, Lond., vol. xxiii, 1862, p. 495. The fact that 

 these examples were not figured in the accompanying plates probably 

 explains the long delay in the appearance of the Miillerian hypothesis. 

 See pp. 211-12 of the present work. 



- Kosmos, May, 1879. 



