434 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. VII. No. 170. 



naiiiEe, Heliconiinse, Acrseinse, and some Pa- 

 pilioninje were found very much rarer m.im- 

 icking forms, chiefly of the group Pierinse, 

 but partly belonging to other groups, and 

 some even to the Heterocera, which, de- 

 parting very widely from the aspect of their 

 respective allies, imitated with more or less 

 exactness the abundant species in question ; 

 (2) the numerous and showy Danainse, etc., 

 although of slow flight, did not appear to 

 be molested by the usual insectivorous foes ; 

 and (3) the members of these unassailed 

 tribes possessed malodorous juices not 

 found in the mimicking forms or their 

 allies. From these data he argued that 

 the examination of these extraordinary re- 

 semblances was to be found in the great 

 advantage it would be to species unde- 

 fended by offensive secretions, and there- 

 fore palatable and much hunted down, to 

 find escape in the disguise of species recog- 

 nized and avoided as unpalatable ; and 

 traced the mimicries to the long-continued 

 action of natural selection, perpetually 

 weeding out by insectivorous agencies 

 every occurring variation not in the direc- 

 tion of likeness to the protected forms, but 

 as perpetually preserving, and so aiding the 

 development by heredity, of every varia- 

 tion favorable to the attainment of the pro- 

 tective mimicrJ^ 



This sagacious application of the Dar- 

 winian theorj' in solution of one of the most 

 difficult and baffling of the problems pre- 

 sented to zoologists was of the greatest 

 service and encouragement to all students 

 of evolution. I retain to-day the liveliest 

 recollection of the delight I experienced in 

 the perusal of a copy of Bates's Memoir re- 

 ceived from himself; for his work was not 

 that of the mere cabinet systematist, but 

 came with all the force of face-to-face com- 

 mune with the abounding life of the tropics. 



Before two j'ears had passed, Bates's ex- 

 planation of mimicry was confirmed by his 

 former companion in exploration, Alfred 



Russel Wallace, who, working with equal 

 devotion in the Malayan Islands, had ob- 

 served and was able to adduce a strictly 

 analogous series of mimetic resemblances 

 among Oriental butterflies, and gave his 

 unreserved acceptance of the Batesian in- 

 terpretation.* Such support from the co- 

 founder with Darwin of the theory of nat- 

 ural selection, and from a naturalist of the 

 widest experience in both Western and 

 Eastern tropics, was of the greatest weight 

 with evolutionists generally. 



My own contribution to the subject was 

 read to the Linnsean Society in March, 

 1868. f In the previous year I had made 

 an entomological tour in Natal, and had 

 enjoyed some precious opportunities of ob- 

 serving in nature several cases of mimicry 

 between species not inhabiting the Cape 

 Colony. There was no claim to originality 

 in my paper ; it simply rounded ofl' the case 

 by adding from Africa, the third great 

 tropical region of the globe, a series of in- 

 stances and observed facts confirmatory of 

 those brought forward by Bates from the 

 iSTeotropical, and by Wallace from the 

 Oriental region. Of course, I had nothing 

 like the extended field experiences of those 

 great naturalists, and the African material 

 then available was but scanty ; but it so 

 happened that perhaps the most striking 

 and elaborate of all recorded cases of mim-. 

 icry— that exhibited by the females of the 

 Merope group of Papilio — had come under 

 my personal observation in South Africa, 

 and I was thus in a position to describe 

 satisfactorily a wonderful illustration of the 

 Batesian theory.]; 



* Trans. Linn. Soc, XXV. (1864). 



tTran. Linn. Soc, XXVI. (1869). 



X At various subsequent dates I was enabled, 

 through the valuable aid of Mr. J. P. Mansel "Weale 

 and Colonel J. H. Bowker, to make known to science 

 conclusive evidence of the species-identity of the three 

 mimetic females of Papilio cenea, and of the pairing 

 of the widely-differing sexes of that species. See 

 Trans. Ent. Soc. Loud., 1874, p. 137, and 1881, p. 

 169; and ' Soutb African Butterflies,' III., p. 254 

 (1889). 



