Mimicry Among Animals 



among some lighter foliage the blue and purple 

 tints in its plumage would far sooner betray it. 

 The robin redbreast, too, although it might be 

 thought that the red on its breast made it much 

 easier to be seen, is in reality not at all endangered 

 by it, since it generally contrives to get among 

 some russet or yellow fading leaves, where the 

 red matches very well with the autumn tints, 

 and the brown of the rest of the body with the 

 bare branches. "* 



Reptiles offer us many similar examples. Tin- 

 most arboreal lizards, the iguanas, are as green 

 as the leaves they feed upon, and the slender 

 whip-snakes are rendered almost invisible as 

 they glide among the foliage by a similar coloura- 

 tion. How difficult it is sometimes to catch 

 sight of the little green tree-frogs sitting on the 

 leaves of a small plant enclosed in a glass case 

 in the Zoological Gardens; yet how much better 

 concealed they must be among the fresh green 

 damp foliage of a marshy forest. There is a 

 North American frog found on lichen-covered 

 rocks and walls, which is so coloured as exactly 

 to resemble them, and as long as it remains quiet 

 would certainly escape detection. Some of the 

 geckos which cling motionless on the trunks of 

 trees in the tropics, are of such curiously marbled 

 colours as to match exactly with the bark they 

 rest upon. 



In every part of the tropics there are tree 

 snakes that twist among boughs and shrubs, or 

 lie coiled up in the" dense' masses of foliage. 

 79 



