MIMICRY. 325 



unknown plant in the absence of flowers or fruit. 

 Turn, for instance, again to the Enphorbiacece, and 

 compare one of the species of Phyllanthus, with flat- 

 tened phyllodes, as Phyllantlms falcata} with a 

 similar structure in a species of the Buckwheat 

 family 3 (Polygonacece). Here, in an unusual form, a 

 striking mimetic resemblance will be encountered. 



Or, if we have only the young condition, without 

 flowers or fruit, of such a floating plant as Jussicea 

 rcpens, one of the Onagraceae, we shall at once be 

 struck with its resemblance to a similar condition 

 ■of an Euphorbiaceous plant (Phyllanthus fltcitans), 

 and, at the same time, with such a cryptogam as 

 Salvinia rotundifolia. In our figures of these three 

 plants the resemblance is less striking than in the 

 plants themselves (fig. 6j). All of them float on 

 the water, under similar conditions, in different parts 

 •of the world. 



Dr. Berthold Seemann speaks of having seen, 

 in the Sandwich Islands, a variety of Solanum 

 (S. Nelsoni) which looked for all the world like a 

 well -known Buettneraceous plant of New Holland 

 (Tlwmasia solanacea), " the resemblance between the 

 two widely-separated plants being quite as striking 

 as that pointed out in Bates's "Naturalist on the 



1 " Botanical Register," pi. 373. 



3 Mahlenbcckiaplatycladium, " Botanical Magazine,'' p!. 5,382. 



