80 THE VICTORIAN STATU'KALIST. 



far as I know no adequate explanation has been found. The 

 most common form of protective coloration is brought about by 

 definite markings — e.g., the snipe can with great difficulty be dis- 

 tinguished when standing motionless among the dead vegetation 

 in its favourite haunts. A tiger or leopard skin looks one of the 

 most conspicuous objects, and yet such a famous hunter as Major 

 Walford states that, on one occasion, he was unable to distinguish 

 a tiger not twenty yards off, so closely did its yellow and black 

 stripes resemble the withered stalks and deep shadows of the 

 jungle grass. The defenceless sloth, too, is apparently a most 

 conspicuous object, when seen in a museum, from the oval buff- 

 coloured spot on his back ; but a writer as far back as 1810 

 sa y S : — " The colour and even the shape of the hair are much 

 like withered moss and serve to hide the animal in the trees, but 

 particularly when it has that orange-coloured spot between the 

 shoulders and lies close to the tree ; it looks then exactly like a 

 piece of branch, where the rest has been broken off, by which the 

 hunters are often deceived." 



You are all familiar with the way in which moths and beetles 

 resemble their surroundings, but there are creatures whose 

 mimicry is so good as to deceive even the clos st view. I have 

 frequently seen a small species of caterpillar common on the red 

 currant bushes, feeling about in search of a new landing place, but 

 when it was disturbed it erected itself and became so rigid and 

 motionless as to exactly resemble a withered leaf-stalk. 



The author of " The Naturalist in Nicaragua " once saw a leaf- 

 like locust stand immovable in the midst of a band of insect-eating 

 ants, which ran over its body and legs and did not seem to be aware 

 what a glorious feast was so near their reach. The currant cater- 

 pillar to which I referred is, I think, that of one of the geometer 

 moths; and Mr. Weir, of the Britsh Museum, says that, "after 

 being an entomologist for thirty years, he took out his pruning 

 scissors to cut off a spur from a plum tree which he had evidently 

 overlooked in pruning the day before, and he found it to be a 

 caterpillar about two inches long, and even after telling several 

 friends that there was a caterpillar in a space of two inches radius, 

 none of them could see it." 



One of the most perfect instances of mimicry was brought 

 under my notice by a gentleman who had spent some years in 

 India. It was a butterfly (probably Kallima inachis) the under 

 surface of whose wings resembled a dead leaf. This butterfly 

 settles on a twig ; the short tail of the posterior wings just touches 

 it, and looks like a leaf-stalk ; from this a dark curved line runs 

 across to the elongated tip of the anterior wings — this is the mib- 

 rib, and from both sides run off oblique nervures. The head and 

 antennae are quite hidden by the closed upper wings. 



That as good examples are to be found in Australia I do not 



