90 
When I made these observations I had no idea that this most 
remarkable protective adaptation was known. I had, of course, some 
knowledge of mimicry, but I had never found this special case 
mentioned in litterature. On my return from the voyage I looked 
up the matter and found that nothing is said of it in such books 
as Punnett's ,,Mimicry in butterflies" 1915, Jacobi's ,, Mimikry 
und verwandte Erscheinungen" 1913, or Beddard's ,Animal 
coloration" 1892, and neither did I find it in the usual text books. 
But then I found it mentioned in E. B. Poulton”s ,The colours 
of animals" 1890, p. 207, the description given by Poulton being 
in the most perfect agreement with my own observations. Even 
the fact mentioned by Poulton, that some of the ,,Blues" (Poly- 
ommatus) show the same peculiar movement of the hindwings, 
up and down alternately, when at rest, I observed on a small 
species, evidently Lycæna hanno Stoll., the only species of Ly- 
cæna recorded from Taboga (and the Panama Canal Zone) by 
Harrison G. Dyar in his ,Report on the Lepidoptera of the 
Smithsonian Biological Survey of the Panama Canal Zone" "). 
Later on Professor Poulton kindly gave me some more re- 
ferences to newer litterature, viz. Marshall's paper ,The Bionomics 
of South African Insects"; Poulton's ,Essays on Evolution" 1908 
and Longstaff ,Butterfly-hunting in many lands" 1912 — be- 
sides the notice quoted above from the Proc. Ent. Soc. London 
1906. — Although there is thus recorded a good deal of observ- 
ations on this remarkable habit of the Thecla's I have thought it 
worth while publishing my own observations, partly because they 
concern species on which such observations had not been made 
hitherto, partly because I thought it a good opportunity of figuring 
some of these forms in their natural position, which, in my 
opinion, conveys a much better idea of this wonderful adaptation 
than a pure description can give — and this has not yet been 
given, at leåst not in the litterature I have consulted. 
On reading Pieper's book ,Mimicry, Selektion, Darwinismus" 
I was very surprised in finding (p. 27) a most peremptory remark 
about this case of protective adaptation, ascribing it ,gånzlich der 
Autosuggestion, dem unbewussten Drang iiberall Mimicry zu er- 
7”) Proc. U. S. Nat. Museum. Vol. 47. 1914. p: 152. 
