918 ANIMAL LIFE 
devils there is no light, the inky darkness being absolute. 
This shining lure is therefore a most effective means of 
securing food. 
112. Mimiery.— Although the word mimicry could often 
have been used aptly in the foregoing account of protective 
resemblances, it has been reserved for use in connection 
with a certain specific group of cases. It has been reserved 
to be applied exclusively to those rather numerous instances 
where an otherwise defenseless animal, one without poison- 
fangs or sting, and without an ill-tasting substance in its 
body, mimics some other specially defended or inedible ani- 
mal sufficiently to be mistaken for it and so to escape 
attack. Such cases of protective resemblance are called 
true mimicry, and they are especially to be observed among 
insects. 
In Fig. 139 are pictured three familiar American butter- 
flies. One of these, the Monarch butterfly (Anosia plexip- 
pus), is perhaps the most abundant and widespread butter- 
fly of our country. It is a fact well known to entomologists 
that the Monarch is distasteful to birds and is let alone by 
them. It is a conspicuous butterfly, being large and chiefly 
of a red-brown color. The Viceroy butterfly (Basilarchia 
archippus), also red-brown and much like the Monarch, is 
not, as its appearance would seem to indicate, a very near 
relative of the Monarch, belonging to the same genus, but 
on the contrary it belongs to the same genus with the third 
butterfly figured, the black and white Basilarchia. All the 
butterflies of the genus Bastlarchia are black and white 
except this species, the Viceroy, and one other. The Vice- 
roy is not distasteful to birds; it is edible, but it mimics the 
inedible Monarch so closely that the deception is not de- 
tected by the birds, and so it is not molested. 
In the tropics there have been discovered numerous 
similar instances of mimicry by edible butterflies of inedi- 
ble kinds. The members of two great families of butterflies 
(Danaidw and Heliconid) are distasteful to birds, and are 
