VIII 



NATURAL SELECTION THE CAUSE 



OF MIMETIC RESEMBLANCE AND 



COMMON WARNING COLOURS 



A Paper read before the Linnean Society of London, March 17, 1898. 

 Reprinted from the Linnean Society' s Journal Zoology, vol. xxvi, p. 558. 

 Revised : greatly modified : many additions to text and footnotes. 



i. Historical Introduction. 



SUPERFICIAL resemblances between animals, especially 

 numerous in Insecta, were known long before H. W. 

 Bates's paper, Contributions to an Insect Fauna of the 

 Amazon Valley, was read before the Linnean Society on 

 November 21, 1861, and published in the Transactions 

 the following year. 1 Some of the principal records of 

 these earlier observations are to be found in the Trans- 

 actions of the same learned Society. 



W. S. Macleay, in his Horae Entomologicae? alluded 

 to certain cases which are now included under Mimicry, 

 viz. the likeness of some Diptera to Hymenoptera, and 

 interpreted them, together with many other resemblances 

 of structure and life-history, by the principle of Analogy 

 as distinct from Affinity in Nature. 3 These views were 

 adopted by Macleay's immediate successors. 



The Rev. William Kirby read A Description of some 

 Insects which appear to exemplify Mr. William S. Mac- 

 Leay's Doctrine of Affinity and Analogy, before the 

 Linnean Society on December 17, 1822, and the paper 

 was published in the Transactions* 



1 Vol. xxiii, p. 495. 2 London, 1819 and 1821. 



s Pt. II, p. 365. * Vol. xiv, p. 93. 



