STEICTLY INCOG. 61 



experienced naturalist has long since got utterly tired of. 

 But has your rash objector ever lighted upon that rare larva 

 which lives among the periwinkles, and exactly imitates a 

 periwinkle petal ? Has he ever discovered those deceptive 

 creatures which pretend for all the world to be leaves of 

 lady's-bedstraw, or dress themselves up as flowers of 

 buttonweed ? Has he ever hit upon those immoral cater- 

 pillars which wriggle through life upon the false pretence 

 that they are only the shadows of projecting ribs on the 

 under surface of a full-grown lime leaf ? No, not he ; he 

 passes them all by without one single glance of recognition ; 

 and when the painstaking naturalist who has hunted them 

 every one down with lens and butterfly net ventures tenta- 

 tively to describe their personal appearance, he comes up 

 smiling with his great russet woolly bear comfortably nest- 

 ling upon a green cabbage leaf, and asks you in a voice of 

 triumphant demonstration, where is the trace of conceal- 

 ment or disguise in that amiable but very inedible insect ? 

 Go to, Sir Critic, I will have none of you ; I only use you 

 for a metaphorical marionette to set up and knock down 

 again, as Mr. Punch in the street show knocks down the 

 policeman who comes to arrest him, and the grimy black 

 personage of sulphurous antecedents who pops up with a 

 fizz through the floor of his apartment. 



Queerer still than the caterpillars which pretend to be 

 leaves or flowers for the sake of protection are those truly 

 diabolical and perfidious Brazilian spiders which, as Mr. 

 Bates observed, are brilliantly coloured with crimson and 

 purple, but ' double themselves up at the base of leaf-stalks, 

 so as to resemble flower buds, and thus deceive the insects 

 upon which they prey.' There is something hideously 

 wicked and cruel in this lowest depth of imitative infamy. 

 A flower-bud is something so innocent and childlike ; and 

 to disguise oneself as such for purposes of murder and 



