46 ANIMAL COLORATION. 



explained as a need for protection, an explanation of that sort 

 cannot possibly be advanced to account for a still more remark- 

 able instance of a connection between colour and locality whicb 

 has been lately brought forward by Dr. Adalbert Seitz. 



In a forest of southern Brazil Dr. Seitz found a perfectly 

 circumscribed region in which the insects were almost entirely 

 blue ; a few miles away from this locality the insects were red, 

 yellow — any colour but blue; but in the particular locality 

 blue was so characteristic a tint, that out of twenty butterflies 

 ten were entirely blue and the remaining ten partially blue. 

 Nor was blue found to be confined to the lepidoptera : the 

 flies and hemiptera were also largely blue. We must therefore, 

 as Dr. Seitz remarks in commenting upon these facts, not at 

 once put down every colour phenomenon to mimicry, need 

 for protective resemblance, warning coloration and so forth; 

 there are plenty of phenomena which do not seem capable of 

 explanation on any of these theories. 



The connection between colour, form and locality was dwelt 

 upon by Dr. Andrew Murray. Some of the examples quoted 

 by Murray have been since explained by mimicry; but others 

 cannot, at least in the present state of our knowledge, be so 

 explained. 



The Clouded Yellow {Golias ediisa), one of our handsomest 

 English butterflies, has a well-marked variety known as Helice. 

 Helice chiefly diff'ers from Edusa in the paler colour. In the 

 Argentine Republic * there occurs an allied species of Colias, 

 C. lesbia, which has also a varietal form differing from it about 

 as much as Helice differs from Edusa. But a more strikiuff 

 instance still is also to be met with in the same part of South 

 America, showing that there is a tendency in the widely 

 separated localities, which presumably resemble each other 

 * Zoologische JahrbUcher, vol. v. 



