Color and Pattern and their Uses 



609 



(Plate XI, Figs, i, 4, also text Fig. 795). The Basilarchias, constituting a 

 genus of numerous species, are with but two or three exceptions not at all 

 of the color or pattern of Anosia, but in the case of the particular species 

 archippus not only the red-brown ground-color but the fine pattern details 

 in black and whitish copy faithfully the details in Anosia; only in the addi- 



FIG. 794. Various moths and wasps, the moths having the appearance of wasps, prob- 

 ably through mimicry, and protected by being mistaken for the stinging insects. 

 (Photograph by author; natural size.) 



tion of a thin blackish line across the discal area of the hind wings does 

 archippus show any noticeable difference. Viceroy is believed not to be dis- 

 tasteful to birds, but its close mimicry of the distasteful monarch undoubt- 

 edly leads to its being constantly mistaken for it by the birds and thus left 

 unmolested. 



The subject of mimicry has not been studied largely among the insects 

 of our country, but in the tropics and subtropics numerous striking examples 

 of mimetic forms have been noted and written about. The members of 

 two large families of butterflies, the Danaidae and Heliconidae, are distasteful 

 to birds, and are mimicked by many species of other butterfly families, espe- 

 cially the Pieridae, and by the swallowtails, Papilionidae. Many plates 

 illustrating such cases have been published by Poulton and Marshall, Haase, 



