WARNING COLOURS AND MIMICRY 161 



tasteful and palatable alike. In this way true or 

 Batesian mimicry, and convergent or Mi'illerian mimicry, 

 merge into one great law. Moreover, the principle is not 

 merely one of line-for-line imitation, nor is it limited to 

 insects of one order. " From groups of species within the 

 same order," writes Professor Raphael Meldola, " such as 

 butterflies and moths, groups of different genera of wasps 

 or beetles, and so forth, we can gather a more widely 

 abstract idea of types of warning colours common to whole 

 tribes of insects, irrespective of the orders to which they 

 belong. In other words, we can discern over and above 

 the actual mimetic resemblance, which may be more or 

 less exact, a kind of general similarity in design which 

 suggests that certain types of pattern have been fixed by 

 the action of natural selection as outward and visible signs 

 of distastefulness. Thus, the yellow and black-banded 

 pattern so frequently observed in wasps, flies, beetles, &c, 

 is a very good example of a common warning type of 

 pattern ... it is only necessary to add that from the 

 insects inhabiting one district it is often possible to detect 

 similar arrangements of colour and marking among 

 beetles of various families, flies, wasps, and bees, bugs 

 and moths — a most heterogeneous assemblage of orders, 

 none of the species being exact mimics of each other in 

 the strictly Batesian or Miillerian sense, and yet all pre- 

 senting a general uniformity of colouring and pattern." 



