TRIMEN'S DISCOVERIES IN MIMICRY 237 



far the most complex and difficult to interpret 

 of any in the world. When, in this masterly 

 memoir, he had at length unravelled the tangled 

 relationships, three * species ', up to that time 

 regarded as entirely distinct, had been sunk as 

 the three different mimetic females of a single 

 non-mimetic male, then known as a fourth 

 * species '. Trimen's conclusions were not con- 

 firmed by the supreme test of breeding until 

 1902, and all three mimetic forms found in one 

 locality were not bred from the eggs of a single 

 parent until 1906. 1 



One of the principal opponents of Trimen's 

 conclusions was the late W. C. Hewitson, who 

 said : * it would require a stretch of the imagina- 

 tion, of which I am incapable, to believe that . . . 

 P. merope . . . indulges in a whole harem of 

 females, differing as widely from it as any other 

 species in the genus . . .'- However, shortly 

 after he had written the above sentence Hewitson 

 received from one of his own collectors this 

 very male taken paired with one of the mimetic 

 females. 8 



My friend Mr. Harry Eltringham has recently 

 pointed out to me a passage, marked by much 

 confusion of thought, in Hewitson's Exotic Butter- 

 flies^ which might be read as an anticipation 



1 See 'dardanus' in index of Essays on Evolution (1908), 414; 

 also Plate XXIII in ZVo/w. Ent. Soc. Loud. (1908), 427-45. 



3 Ttvns. Ent. Soc. Lend. (1874*, 137. 

 5 E. M. M. (Oct., 1874), 113. 



4 London, 1862-66, III : text of plate ' Nyinphalidre. Diadenia iii. : 

 (pages unnumbered). 



