92 ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. [March, '03 



that an unbiassed consideration of the facts presented in this paper yields 

 a very strong measure of support to the classical theories of Bates, Wal- 

 lace and Fritz Miiller. I would go further and maintain that Mr. Mar- 

 shall's observations and experiments here recorded place Africa in the 

 first position as the region which supplies stronger evidence than any 

 other of the validity of these theories. But I am even more impressed 

 by the strong support yielded to the modern developments of Fritz 

 Miiller's theory of mimicry. Where has Prof. Meldola's Miillerian ex- 

 planation in 1882 of the common facies of specially protected subfamilies 

 of butterflies received such illustration as in the groups of synaposematic 

 Acraeinse captured in one place and at one time ; or the extension in 1887 

 by the present writer of the same interpretation to the types of insect colour 

 and pattern which are common to a country, received such support as in 

 the marvellous group of Mashonaland insects of many Orders with an ap- 

 pearance founded upon that of the distasteful Coleopterous genus Lycus? 

 And the most recent developments of all, the discovery (1894-7) of the 

 principle of 'reciprocal mimicry' or ' diaposematic resemblance,' and 

 of the specially close mimetic resemblance of the females in Miillerian 

 mimicry no less than in Batesian by Dr. Dixey, together with his Miiller- 

 ian interpretation of resemblances between mimics overUing their resem- 

 blance to a common model, all these, founded on the study of Neotropi- 

 cal forms, have supplied the explanation of numerous instances in the 

 Ethiopian region although applied to very different families and sub- 

 families of butterflies, to Coleoptera as well as to Lepidoptera." 



Passing now to some more detailed conclusions. 16 pages recording 

 the results of offering butterflies to Mantids are summarized " that out- 

 side the Acraeinae and doubtfully the Danainae, Mantidae devour butter- 

 flies very freely, the species with warning colours as well as the others, 

 and that they are far more undiscriminating than the majority of vertebrate 

 insect-eaters." The possibility of captivity affecting the acceptance or 

 rejection of food offered is taken into account, but evidence is also ad- 

 duced that the behaviour of Mantidae in the wild state "entirely confirms 

 the conclusions to be drawn from Mr. Marshall's experiments." 



Twenty-one experiments on offering butterflies to spiders are described ; 

 Mr. Marshall is convinced " that both spiders and Mantises have no ap- 

 preciation of warning colours ; and this fact has elucidated another 

 which often puzzled me, I mean the apparently constant correlation be- 

 tween distastefulness and tenacity of life in Lepidoptera. . . . For if my 

 surmise is true, that insectivorous invertebrates are not capable of appre- 

 ciating warning colors, but have to taste all their captives before being 

 able to tell whether they are edible or not (which I think is clear from 

 my experiments), then tenacity of life (as a protective agency) will be as 

 useful an acquisition against invertebrates as warning coloration is against 

 vertebrates, and come into play when the latter is useless. ... I believe 

 that the toughness of inedible insects has been primarily developed to 

 counteract the injuries from invertebrate foes (which are incapable of 



